Across China: Hunan

Villagers poisoned

More than 500 villagers have been sickened by cadmium, a heavy metal pollutant discharged by a chemical plant in Liuyang city in Central China's Hunan province, the local authority said yesterday.

Zhou Mengde, an official in charge of the investigation, said the government offered free health checks to 2,888 villagers living within 1,200m of the chemical discharge, and urinalysis of 509 among them showed excessive cadmium levels.