Optimism about the expected financial windfall from the discovery of gold in Nigeria turned to horror when mining activities led to contemporary history’s most severe lead poisoning crisis.
Latest reports indicate that 400 children have died in eight communities in Nigeria’s Zamfara state. The worst-affected regions were Bukkuyum and Anka. Lead is lethal to children in high enough doses. Young children are especially vulnerable and have accounted for most of the casualties. At least 284 children under five years old are counted among these 400 children.
In some children, blood levels of lead were fifteen times greater than the threshold levels require immediate treatment. An inquiry by the United Nations (UN) Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP)found that mercury and lead levels in the air were 500 times tolerable levels.
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention called the number of casualties “unprecedented.”
Medical personnel also detected high lead levels in the blood of another 742 children. According to Medecins Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), this number could rocket to 3,000 by next year’s end. In total, a reported 18,000 people have been affected.
Brain damage, blindness, deafness and miscarriages are among the non-fatal health consequences of lead poisoning. Pregnant women can pass the mineral on to their fetuses. Lactating women can likewise transmit lead and mercury poisoning to their breastfeeding infants.
Pond water, well water, soil and air have all been contaminated with lead and mercury from small-scale gold mining, having tragically disastrous consequences. Small-scale miners reportedly happened upon a vein of gold that was heavily contaminated with lead – the source of the problem originating in March of last year.
In order to earn some extra income, poverty-wracked communities have tried to take the same advantages of their mineral wealth that larger mining corporations have been able to. When villagers take on their own mining activities (called small-scale or "artisanal" mining) health and safety standards are virtually non-existent – a fact that led to this tragedy.
Small-scale mining has increased dramatically in response to the upward surge of the price of gold in the wake of the global financial crisis, which threw millions of people living in the developing world into poverty. However, without adequate health and safety supervision, the miners were unknowingly exposed to lead poisoning when they began to process the ore, grinding it up by hand without knowning it was chock full of lead. The miners used simple grain grinders, allowing the lead-contaminated mineral dust to float over to the grassy areas where children play. The lead also contaminated water well areas, where the ore was washed to separate the gold from the rest of the rock.
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