ADADMore than 26 former drillers in Sangzhi county have died of lung disease since 2009, according to residents, who say deaths are accelerating, with about 100 others who are seriously ill. ADChinese officials, who are drawing up new plans to study the crisis, say 23 million workers are at risk of getting the disease. “Everybody in the village wanted to know me because I had jobs,” he said, sitting in a three-story brick house he built in Leiyang county with elaborate copper doors. Shelly Tse, director of the occupational health studies center at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said the Shenzhen workers were further handicapped by the latent nature of pneumoconiosis. During one trip to Sangzhi county, a Washington Post reporter was surrounded by plainclothes security officials and forced to leave the province.

Source: Washington Post December 15, 2019 20:44 UTC