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'Mass Hysteria' in Jilin: Fair Call, or Fog?
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'Mass Hysteria' in Jilin: Fair Call, or Fog?
06-01 11:45 Caijing Magazine
By staff reporters Li Hujun, Yang Yue and Liu Jingjing
More than 1,000 workers at the Jilin Chemical Fibre Group Co. Ltd. in the northeastern city of Jilin reported dizziness, nausea and other symptoms during a three-week health crisis that so far has defied clear explanation.
At least 161 workers were hospitalized as health woes rippled through the plant's labor force between April 23 and May 12.
Some workers blamed a gas leak at the neighboring Jilin Connell Chemical for a "mass poisoning." On April 30, local government ordered the plant to elevate the height of its waste gas emission system and further away from Chemical Fibre to reduce the monoxide density in the close neighborhood.
At some point during the investigation, the State Administration of Work Safety also alerted other manufacturers to "draw lessons from the gas leak accident at Jilin Connel Chemical" in a notice published on its official website on May 18 but the quoted sentence, which ran contrary to the judgment given previously by a team of Health of Ministry experts, was axed the next day without an explanation.
The team, led by researcher Zhang Shoulin from the National Institute of Occupational Health and Poison Control under the Chinese Center of Disease Control and Prevention, offered a different interpretation after the wave of illness. Based on a four-day investigation in Jilin, they told journalists at a briefing organized by the Jilin municipal government May 14 that the workers were basically victims of a psychogenic disorder -- mass hysteria -- and not toxic chemicals.
Since then, all workers receiving treatment at the Jilin Occupational Disease Hospital have been discharged or transferred to other hospitals.
A Caijing investigation found that a similar spate of sickness last September, the death of a Connell worker in April, and questions about the plant's waste gas discharge system have contributed to a lingering cloud of suspicion among employees at Jilin Chemical Fibre.
Forty-year-old Jilin Chemical Fibre is a former state-owned company later revamped as a joint venture. Connell is an enterprise started by a Hong Kong concern that's now dominantly state-owned. The plants are on opposite sides of a street in an economic and technology zone in northwest Jilin.
Each company partially owns the other. Moreover, they are linked through shareholders, ties to the local government, and top executives.
Connell is potentially the country's biggest producers of aniline, a chemical used for dyes, drugs and other products. Its production line opened in early April.
After the health incident began, the Connell plant shut down for four weeks. It later restarted. But life at Jilin Chemical Fibre has yet to return to normal.
Medical Inquiry
Experts say mass hysteria typically begins when one or several individuals in a group become ill under stress. Others manifest similar symptoms, which typically include nausea, muscle weakness and headaches.
The Ministry of Health investigators found that the patients fell ill in the same factory but at different workshops and at different times, reporting smelling of different odors. "They did not manifest typical or regular symptoms, or uniform organic damages. Tests did not produce accurate positive results. Auxiliary test results offered no clinical reference.
Their investigation report also mentioned that inspection tests of air quality at the Jilin Chemical showed that harmful chemicals are within the permitted level and that the patients' symptoms are not typical of acute chemical poisoning.
Suspicions of hysteria emerged among health investigators after authorities officially reported that none of Connell's employees said they were poisoned, and the number of Jilin Chemical Fibre workers reporting sicknesses continued rising even after Connell halted production.
Neither environmental protection nor work safety authorities detected any irregularities among workers and operations at the Connell plant.
Symptoms of hysteria should be behavioral. However, health records and medical examination results from several affected workers revealed organic abnormalities, including temporary excessive levels of carbonyl hemoglobin, which is a typical indicator of monoxide poisoning and sometimes can be detected in heavy smokers too.
Some suggested that Jilin Chemical Fibre was a more likely source of any toxic discharges. But workers at Jilin Chemical Fibre argued its emissions, which include sulfureted hydrogen and carbon bisulfide, had been normal.
Cases of psychogenic illness have been reported in the past in China and around the world. To determine whether the Jilin incident definitely fits the pattern, specialists say they need more testing and time to exclude all other possible explanations. But the size and scope of the latest event could make it one of the largest cases ever in China.
In June 2005, a six-year-old student died and more than 100 students showed "irregular reactions" during an inoculation of 2,500 primary and middle school students in Dazhuang Village, Si County, in Anhui Province, in a mass psychogenic illness diagnosed by the Health of Ministry investigator.
Troubled Past
Officially, the Connell workforce was sickness-free. But rumors clashed with the official explanation after Li Hongwei, a repairman in his 30s, died suddenly April 13 while working in Connell's aniline workshop.
Neither Connell nor local authorities reported the death publicly. Wang Daxiang, the company's deputy general manager, told Caijing that everything had gone smoothly during a trial production run at the factory between April 4 and 30.
"Nothing extraordinary happened then," Wang said. "And so far, none of our 600 staff members and some 400 contracted workers have reported any physical discomfort or irregularities."
Sources told Caijing that Connell described Li's death as a result of heart attack, and agreed to pay the Li family more than 100,000 yuan in work-related casualty compensation, as well as a monthly subsidy. The man's wife, who was expected to get a job at the factory, declined an interview request.
Some rumors stemmed from allegations such as Li's 8-year-old son spread word that his father was "poisoned," and Li had complained about a bad smell at the factory as well as fits of weakness before dying. Such allegations spread quickly, triggering rumors that Li had died of a gas leak.
Workers at Jilin Chemical Fibre started reporting to hospitals with health woes 10 days after Li died.
An emergency report sent by Jilin Chemical Fibre to local government authorities April 27 said workers in the yarn workshop reported strong, irritating odors between 5:30 and 6 p.m. on April 23, and that some felt dizzy and nauseous. Supervisors started letting workers go home at 6:30 p.m., and production halted until morning.
But more workers showed symptoms within an hour of reporting to work. The yarn workshop is less than 100 meters from the Connell plant.
"The factory supervisors asked all of us to go home and reminded us to avoid walking through the front gate facing Connell, but instead take an internal route and exit through a back door," said Man Hongyan, 40, a woman who works in the yarn shop. "I had a headache, and felt nauseous, weak and numb."
Man was immediately carried from the workshop by a factory supervisor. Her sister, who also works in the yarn shop, took her to the company hospital on a motorized tricycle. A few hours later, Man was transferred to Jilin Occupational Hospital for "exposure to unknown gases."
An initial CT scan, brain ultrasound and other medical procedures determined that Man was healthy except for cerebral spasms, which doctors said can occur in healthy people. "I was told nothing was wrong," she said.
Man was discharged from the hospital three days later April 27 after being diagnosed with "cardiac arrhythmia" and "dizziness which is to be further diagnosed." That same morning, hospital officials contacted Jilin Chemical Fibre and were told that no toxic or poisonous gases had been detected by local environmental protection and work safety officials.
"The patient can be treated by a physician accordingly and transferred back to the company hospital," the hospital wrote on Man's medical record.
Man told Caijing she still has convulsions, chest congestion and panicky feelings from time to time. Her younger sister reported similar symptoms. Both underwent treatment at Jilin CNPC General Hospital.
Another Jilin Chemical Fibre employee who fell ill was Wang Zhe. The 22-year-old has worked in the wool top workshop for three years. He detected strange odors during the night shift April 24, and said factory supervisors told workers to go home early around midnight.
Wang said he collapsed when he returned home. "As soon as I got out of the car, I vomited, started to sweat and felt dizzy," he said. My eyes were red, irritated."
Wang and other colleagues checked in to the Occupational Disease Hospital the next morning. An ultrasound indicated something was wrong with his brain. Wang was half-conscious and suffering from high blood pressure and intracranial hypertension by the time he was transferred to the Jilin City Central Hospital the evening of April 30.
Doctors said he was critically ill. And on the afternoon of May 1, Wang was taken by ambulance to the No. 1 Hospital at Jilin University in Changchun, capital of Jilin Province.
"He couldn't take in anything but a little porridge, until his third day in the ICU," said Wang's father.
Doctors who were in charge of Wang kept silent to the media. Then Caijing sent an electrical copy of Wang's brain CT and MRI films to a Beijing doctor, and was told that Wang developed cerebral edema which probably was caused by poisoning.
It's hard not to associate the latest episode with an event in late September 2008, when a dozen Jilin Chemical Fibre workers got sick. They also reported dizziness and vomiting. Most were guards working at a gate near the Connell plant. They were hospitalized for varying degrees of health troubles and eventually discharged, apparently suffering no serious after-effects.
Caijing learned that Connell paid each of these workers several thousand to 20,000 yuan in compensation. Although aniline poisoning was not officially mentioned in incident reports, some victims' relatives suspect the toxic chemical made them sick. And they may get sick again.
"The latent period for aniline poisoning can be as long as 10 to 20 years," said one relative.
Aniline's History
Before the 2008 event, few among Jilin Chemical Fibre's 10,000 workers knew that Connell was a major producer of aniline, whose production requires large amounts of poisonous chemicals and can generate various harmful gases including monoxide. Making aniline is a simple process but, if not managed properly, can lead to harmful emissions, leaks and even explosions.
Connell officials say the plant's production techniques are safe. Professor Guo Jinghai of Jilin Institute of Chemical Technology -- the main contributor to an official environmental impact evaluation report on Connell -- said the factory uses patented techniques from Germany that remove all potential risk of explosion.
But the city of Jilin is no stranger to aniline disasters. In November 2005, eight people died in an aniline workshop explosion at the CNPC Jilin Petrochemical Co.'s Bi-benzene Plant 101, which was then China's largest aniline producer. Sixty people were injured in the blast and toxic spill polluted the Songhua River.
Six months later, another aniline-related explosion at a CNPC petrochemical subsidiary in Lanzhou, in northwest China's Gansu Province, killed four.
After these accidents, CNPC halted its aniline production facilities nationwide, forcing many domestic buyers to turn to more expensive imports. Later, some equipment and personnel from Plant 101 was transferred to Connell.
Company Connections
Connell President Song Zhiping once told the local newspaper Jiangcheng Wanbao that she launched the aniline project because Jilin Petrochemical Co. no longer wanted it.
"But a profit of some 200 million or 300 million yuan is quite attractive to medium-sized and small enterprises," said Song, 52, who is also a municipal and national delegate to the National People's Congress.
According to Connell's Web site, the new aniline project is expected to create at least 1,000 jobs and generate 700 million yuan in annual tax revenues.
Connell was established as an aniline producer in 2006 with an investment of HK$ 120 million from the Hong Kong Starr International Group Co. In July 2007, Starr transferred 51 percent of its Connell shares to Jintai Investment (Holdings) Co. Ltd., which is wholly owned by the Jilin City Commission of State Assets Supervision and Management (CSASM) since its establishment in 2004.
In the same breath, Jintai Investment transferred to Starr about 5 percent of the 98 percent equity share in Jilin Chemical Fibre that it had controlled since 2004.
Official registration records show Leng Jie, director of the Jilin City Reform and Development Commission, is also president of Jintai Investment and serves as Connell's legal representative. Top executives at Connell and Jilin Chemical Fibre also hold leading positions at Jintai.
Environmental Oversight
Connell's aniline project was registered in 2006, the same year that China's Interim Regulation on Public Participation in Environmental Impact Evaluations took effect. According to Guo, notices were posted both around selected construction sites and on the Web site of Jilin Institute of Chemical Technology, which was in charge of the evaluation. In addition, 60 questionnaires were distributed and a public hearing was held in January 2007.
Nevertheless, Caijing could not locate the online notice or other evaluation materials available for public review on relevant Web sites.
At the hearing, a dozen or so representatives from Connell, the institute and the "local community" participated. But it seems no one represented Jilin Chemical Fibre's residential compound, where some 10,000 people (workers and families) live Less than 2 kilometers southeast of the Connell plant.
As it turned out, the institute's first evaluation report on the environmental risks of Connell's aniline project was rejected because it "failed to clarify wastewater disposal and its location, some basic data was contradictory, and risk evaluations did not follow the right procedures."
Yu Muqing, a researcher at the Changchun Institute of Geography, Chinese Academy of Sciences, said he and a number of other experts in charge of the review proposed at that time that the wastewater, after being treated at Connell, should be channeled to the city's sewage treatment plant for further processing. The evaluation report was approved by Jilin Province Environmental Protection Bureau after the second review.
But some Jilin Chemical Fibre workers say they doubt Connell has operated its own sewage treatment facilities. Some suspect its wastewater was discharged directly into the neighbor factory's sewage pipes. However, Guo said Connell's aniline project couldn't have been approved without a sewage treatment system.
The newspaper Nanfang Zhoumo, or Southern Weekend, quoted some workers as saying Connell proposed moving the residential compound of Jilin Chemical Fibre from the economic zone to a location inside the city limits -- a suggestion that allegedly silenced some voices of opposition against the project at that time.
But Connell's Wang denied the company made that promise. "As a company, we have nothing to do with residents," he said. "It would be up to the government to make a relocation decision."
https://blog.sciencenet.cn/blog-3598-235957.html
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