A medical worker tests a young girl for lead poisoning at the Anhui Provincial Children's Hospital in the province's capital Hefei on Wednesday. [China Daily]

Local officials said on Thursday that an unlicensed battery plant next to the community was to blame for the lead poisoning.

Borui Battery Co Ltd, which is separated from Xinshan community only by a narrow road, produced excessive lead pollution that put local children's health at risk, the Huaining county government said in a press release.

Borui started production in 2007, and ever since the air has been filled with a strong smell and the walls in the neighborhood have been covered by thick grey dust, Huang Jingyu, a 61-year-old resident at Xinshan community told China Daily.

"Borui did not buy any facilities for sewage disposal until a month ago. The polluted water from the plant has been poured directly into the soil for a long time," said angry Huang, whose grandson was recently diagnosed with more than 300 micrograms of lead per liter of blood.

A fourth-grade student at the Xinshan Primary School near the battery plant was first diagnosed with excessive lead in his blood last December, local residents said.

More and more worried parents started taking their children for blood tests from late December, when 23 students at the school were found with dangerously high levels of lead in their blood.

The local authorities have already shut down Borui after the Huaining county's environment protection bureau found that the battery plant had caused the lead poisoning. It noted that the company had not passed the necessary environmental checks and had been operating illegally.

China's environmental protection authorities demand that no battery plant be built within a radius of 500 meters from residential communities.

A pediatrician surnamed Fu at a local hospital told China Daily that in the past decade a lot of companies have set up plants and factories in the area, and that this has severely polluted the environment.

Similar cases have been emerging around the country.

In July 2010, four children living near a battery plant in East China's Jiangsu province were found to be suffering from lead poisoning.

In South China's Guangdong province, a battery factory was shut down in December 2009 after at least 25 children living nearby were found to have excessive lead levels in their blood.