Drug company cuts output over pollution news

A top mainland antibiotics producer has cut production after media reports of decades of serious pollution.

Harbin Pharmaceutical Group said yesterday it would temporarily cut production on several product lines, build new waste-treatment facilities and punish managers responsible for recent illegal discharges of pollutants.

The city's environmental authorities said they had almost finalised plans to move the factory to a less populated area. But scientists expressed concern that moving the factory could raise the risk of generating drug-resistant germs, or superbugs.

China Central Television reported on Sunday that the group's general pharmaceutical factory had been polluting a densely populated neighbourhood, incorporating residential compounds, universities and hospitals, since the 1950s.

Levels of airborne pollutants - mainly hydrogen sulphide - were more than 1,000 times the legal limit, while pollutant levels in water were 10 times higher than legally allowed, according to an investigation by Heilongjiang's Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference two years ago, the report said.

Yesterday's company statement confirmed the water pollution finding but denied that air pollution was a problem.

To reduce pollution, the factory said it would cut output in several product lines but did not say which ones, by how much, or for how long.