China birth defects soar due to pollution: report

Birth defects in Chinese infants have soared nearly 40 percent since 2001, a government report said, and officials linked the rise to China’s worsening environmental degradation.

The rate of defects had risen from 104.9 per 10,000 births in 2001, to 145.5 in 2006, affecting nearly one in 10 families, China’s National Population and Family Planning Commission said in a report on its Web site (www.chinapop.gov.cn).

Infants with birth defects now accounted for “about 4 to 6 percent of total births every year,” the family planning agency said. Of these, 30 percent would die and 40 percent would be “disabled.”"*

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