Hundreds of workers tested for mercury

GUANGZHOU: A month after a total of 23 workers at a lighting manufacturer in Foshan, Guangdong province, were diagnosed with mercury poisoning, the company and a provincial hospital were stepping up efforts to test more than 600 workers.

Hundreds of urine samples were sent to a Guangdong hospital for occupational diseases to determine if other workers have been poisoned with or exposed to mercury.

The samples came from workers from the Gaoming branch of the Foshan Electrical and Lighting Co Ltd, a Shenzhen-listed company. The 23 poisoned workers were working with fluorescent light bulbs, which contains elemental mercury.