Lead Poisoning in Nigeria Kills 160

More than 160 people, most of them children, have died from lead poisoning in Dareta, Nigeria and the surrounding villages. The poisoning isn’t coming from lead paint but from the town’s poisoned land that was made toxic from illegal gold mining in the area. The children, who play in the dirt, are being exposed to lead levels that exceed U.S. limits more than 20 times over.

Nigeria’s government has promised action, but within a few weeks the rainy season will begin and the village, along with the other four affected villages, may be inaccessible. The government officials in Nigeria have confirmed that 60 children from the village of Dareta alone have been killed by the lead poisoning in the last few months. Because the villages are so isolated, without electricity or even roads, the news did not reach government officials for quite some time. The concern now is that the lead may have seeped into groundwater, further exacerbating cleanup efforts.

The true hindrance to the cleanup, however, may be the corrupt government itself. Even though they have promised to invest $1.6 million to aid the cleanup effort, laborers who had been hired to scrape away the lead-filled dirt were refusing to work because the government had not paid them. The government official who visited the town did not make any effort to rectify the matter, although he did hand out baseball caps as part of his reelection effort.

Lead poisoning has mostly been eradicated in the states, thanks to efforts to reduce exposure. The symptoms include loss of appetite, abdominal pain, and vomiting, but the high levels of lead the Nigerian villagers are being exposed to cause convulsions and brain damage. Doctors without Borders has set up an emergency clinic to help treat the hundreds who are sick with lead poisoning, and plans to open a second clinic, but the lead levels are so high in some children that they’ve lost control of their motor abilities.