For China's Orphans, Coal Is a Lifesaver

In China these days, the pollution is so thick you can taste it.

Dec. 27 in Beijing, the pollution index soared to a staggering 421 out of 500, 500 being the worst. The next day, it did the unmentionable. The index hit 500.

Unfortunately, it was not the first time pollution had gone literally off the chart.

Beijing's foul air is caused by a variety of factors. Coal is one of the primary culprits. Seventy percent of China's energy comes from coal, by far the dirtiest energy source, along with the surging number of cars now on the streets. According to China's first White Paper on Energy released in December, the country consumed 2.46 billion tons of coal in 2006 alone. As Beijing Olympic officials scramble to clear the air and fulfill its promise for a "Green Olympics," there remains a small group of Chinese that can't get enough of the black stuff: the poor, who by the millions use coal to heat their homes. In 2005, Eulalia Andreasen, director of the Beijing International Committee for Chinese Orphans, discovered a wintry nightmare unfolding outside of Beijing. A small orphanage called Daming had run out of coal to heat its facilities in the middle of winter and the facility had turned into an icebox. "They had run out of coal and children had suffered from severe frostbite," Andreasen told ABC News. Without heat, a 13-year-old girl had lost her feet. "She had clubbed feet and just had her surgery [to correct them] the summer before. She was recovering and in the middle of winter, it got so cold that she was badly frostbitten. We had no choice but to amputate," Andreasen said. Children in other orphanages were losing fingers, toes and ears because the orphanages were running on insufficient funds. Andreasen shared her discovery with Our Chinese Daughters Foundation (OCDF) in Beijing. Together, Andreasen and OCDF searched for a way to help the children fight the cold.

Coal for Kids

The freezing orphanage that Andreasen discovered was a nongovernmental institution that relied on local donations. However, the donations generated insufficient funds to provide heating and winter supplies for children in the orphanage's care.