| Lead for car batteries kills Senegalese children |
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| Sunday, 11 January 2009 11:18 | |||
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A battery recycling plant in has caused lead contamination which has poisoned and killed 18 children from a Senegalese town. Animals, like goats, chickens and dogs were the first to succumb to the illness which swept across the town of Thiaroye Sur Mer until it started affecting children, leaving toddlers speechless and unbalanced and women giving birth to stillborns. At first, no one knew what was happening to the animals, the children and the mothers, and many chalked it up to being a curse on the town outside of Dakar, the capital. But it was later, after outraged parents called appeared on the news, that an investigation was done, and the culprit, lead was discovered. The soil in Thiaroye Sur Mer is saturated with lead residue from years of removing it from used car batteries and residents began digging up the area to satisfy the demand for lead when the price went up. The World Health Organization has warned that the area extremely contaminated, almost a year following a cleanup by the government. Sadly, the recycling and manufacturing of car batteries are taking place mostly in developing countries opening their residents to the harmful effects of lead poisoning. Since 2007 and 2008 the deaths began occurring and many thought it might have been tuberculosis, malaria or HIV/AIDS, until the Western doctors proved otherwise.
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