From: Tsegai Emmanuel (emmanuelt40@gmail.com)
Date: Thu Jun 17 2010 - 02:17:29 EDT
Officials Widen Nigeria Lead-Poisoning Tests Contamination From Gold Mining
Has Caused at Least 163 Deaths
International health officials and environmental experts are expanding
testing for lead poisoning in a remote northwestern region of Nigeria where
contamination from unmonitored gold-mining practices has killed at least 163
people, most of them children.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has called the
lead-poisoning outbreak unprecedented, with a large number of deaths over
just a few months and dozens of young children found to have dangerously
high levels of lead exposure. The levels of lead in their bodies have made
some unable to stand or walk. Others' hands dangle listlessly from their
wrists as neurological symptoms set in. Health experts fear irreversible
brain damage.
"I've never seen anything like this before," said Antonio Neri, a medical
epidemiologist with the CDC's healthy homes and lead-poisoning prevention
branch who spent more than three weeks investigating the outbreak in
Nigeria. "It's largely unheard of to have children die from lead poisoning
in modern times."
Environmental experts are decontaminating one village and preparing to begin
work on a second in Zamfara State after the discovery of a new gold deposit
led villagers to drag home, break and grind ore rocks that contained high
concentrations of lead. Workers are digging up layers of contaminated soil
with heavy earth-moving equipment and replacing it with clean soil.
Nigerian and international officials are expanding testing for lead exposure
to at least four more villages and say contamination could have spread
further because gold processing is widespread in the area. A Nigerian health
official couldn't be reached for comment. International groups say they are
working in close collaboration with Nigerian authorities.
"We're not sure how far the contamination really goes," said Richard Fuller,
CEO and founder of the Blacksmith Institute, a New York-based charity that
cleans up polluted sites around the world and has helped organize the
cleanup in the villages in Zamfara.
Gold deposits have long existed in the remote area near the border with
Niger, presenting an irresistible lure to impoverished villagers,
particularly as gold prices have risen in recent years.
While adults suffer ill effects from lead poisoning, children, particularly
those under five years old, are most vulnerable: High levels of lead can
cause irreversible brain damage, behavior and learning problems, slowed
growth, convulsions and death, according to the CDC.
The poisoning came to light after a team from the organization Doctors
Without Borders was monitoring for cases of meningitis and measles in the
area and learned of dozens of infant and child deaths. Villagers pointed to
multiple fresh graves. Initially suspecting malaria, which can cause similar
symptoms, the team then discovered heavy-metal poisoning.
The gold rush led to high levels of lead in villagers' homes and in their
blood, as fine dust from grinding the ore to extract gold spread.
All 302 blood samples from two villages that were analyzed by the CDC
revealed lead poisoning, with 85% so high they couldn't be measured by its
screening machine. The agency also said 82% of soil and dust samples from
inside and outside homes in those villages exceeded the U.S. Environmental
Protection Agency threshold of 400 parts per million. Some samples showed
lead levels as high as 100,000 parts per million or more.
Grinding the ore into fine powder, creating fine particles of lead, may have
been the cause of the poisoning, the CDC's Dr. Neri said. Villagers kept the
finely ground powder in their homes, even sleeping on it, he said. "That's
the only way they know" it is secure, he said. "By grinding it into very
fine particles and sleeping and eating around it, they created a very
absorbable material and they're living in it."
Doctors Without Borders so far is treating 80 children under five years old
and 30 breastfeeding mothers—some poisoned with levels of lead higher than
any screening machine can read—at one emergency center it has set up in the
area. Patients take an oral drug for 28 days which binds to the lead and
allows it to be excreted from the body.
"We're not able to treat everyone yet—we're focusing on the most vulnerable,
and the most at risk," said emergency coordinator Lauren Cooney, adding that
some patients have improved with the treatment. The group was planning to
accept 15 more patients on Wednesday, and to open a second center soon, Ms.
Cooney said.
Health workers fear more people will die from lead exposure. Hundreds who
were poisoned but survive could be left with brain damage and other
long-term effects, they say.
"It's quite likely there are more children who will die," Mr. Fuller said.
*Write to *Betsy McKay at betsy.mckay@wsj.com
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