Children work at the gold processing site in Bagega, Nigeria, in 2012 (Courtesy of Olga Overbeek/MSF)
At least 28 children under the age of five have been killed by drinking stream water polluted with lead in Nigeria’s Niger state, the country’s health minister Fidelis Nwankwo unveiled Friday.
According to the country’s officials illegal gold mining is the main cause of the tragedy that has left dozens more in critical conditions.
“The devastating impact of this outbreak is associated with new mining sites which were found to contain more leaded ores which are often brought home for crushing and processing,” minister Nwankwos told reporters, according to AP.
Doctors found the victims had levels of lead in their blood that were 17 to 22 times higher than acceptable limits as established by the World Health Organization.
The health threat is affecting the same region where doctors still are treating children from a 2010 mass poisoning in Zamfara state that killed 400 kids and left many paralyzed and blind because of delays in government funding for a clean-up, according to aid group Doctors Without Borders.
The organization has cured 2,688 of 5,451 people infected in the last five years and hopes to complete treatment in 2016.
Short-term effects of lead poisoning include acute fever, convulsions, loss of consciousness and blindness, while long-term consequences are anemia, kidney failure and brain damage as the most common.
6 Comments
Mark Harder
It seems to me that the first action to take is to teach the locals not to drink from the stream. Second, teach the miners not to bring lead ores into the home to be crushed and processed. In the long term, the site should be remediated and hopefully procedures to mine safely on a small scale can be put in place.
jay stuart
the other question would be is mercury used in the final extraction phases of the gold? Mercury poisoning is rampant in other areas of small scale mining whether mandated or illegal. There are much larger social issues around this type of mining with exploitation of labour, non regulation for profit and the blind eye principal. A lack of, or misdirection of resources from governments is often rife. Its often easier to let an NGO or foreign agency to come up with a solution and deflect accountability.
Scott McKeag
Lead ores are not very soluble and I doubt if drinking water is the problem. The crushing of lead-bearing ore where children play is more probably the cause. The children are likely to be ingesting lead-bearing dust they get on their hands while playing.
Gold Chaser
What lead has got to do with illegal gold mining? Usually the issue is with mercury…
Winkiewon
Scott, You are right on, several years ago, I was involved with the largest EPA lead clean-up to that date, of the Silver Valley in Idaho. Studies showed that the lead blood levels in the Silver Valley children was due to the lead contaminants distributed in the area from the Smelterville smelter over a period of almost 100 years, as it turned out from the study findings,the children’s high levels of Pb was due to playing in contaminated soils, to which the entire area around Kellogg and Smelterville was contaminated, thus the EPA removed and replaced millions of tonnes of topsoil within both communities. The water Pb studies from the Cor d’lane river was not a major issue. as lead does not soluble well, and the smelter had been closed for many years, airborne Pb were no longer an issue in the water as the flushing of the river over years reduced the levels which would have been a problem during the period of the smelters operation.
Dylan Elek McFarlane
It’s a rare-unusual deposit type with high (1-10%) lead values that have been weathered to carbonate and oxide forms that are easily ingested by humans. Better technology/techniques/knowledge might solve the problem, but my guess is that the ore grades for both gold and lead are so marginal that no company would finance any project to make improvements, and recovery of both metals would be difficult. Local, poor and pragmatic farmers decide what is a better risk to take: poverty or poison?