Lead for car batteries poisons an African town

Tests ordered
The government ran blood tests on relatives of the dead children. Their mothers and siblings were found to have lead levels of 1,000 micrograms per liter. Just 100 micrograms per liter is enough to impair brain development in children.

A block from Diaw's house, the illness struck his niece, two-year-old Raminatou, the child Coumba Diaw carried on her back.

"It started with a fever. Her skin was hot. She would tremble and her eyes would roll back. She would drool. Her legs would splay out. She cried all the time," says Coumba Diaw. She speaks without emotion, recounting the events as if it all happened to someone else.

Diaw rushed her daughter to the hospital. Now that they knew the problem, they saved Raminatou.

The cleanup started in March, but was not extensive, residents say. On a side street in Thiaroye Sur Mer, a man points out a pile of sacks full of lead pellets that have sat against a wall for months through the rainy season. He says someone ditched the sacks there when they heard the lead was dangerous, and they were missed by the cleanup operation.

About 950 people have been continuously exposed to lead dust in the neighborhood, and many children show signs of neurological damage, according to WHO. The sifting tossed lead particles into the air where people could inhale it.

Regulation and oversight
In richer countries, recycling of lead batteries is regulated. Most U.S. states require anyone who sells lead-acid batteries to collect spent ones and ship them to recycling plants licensed and regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Europe has similar oversight.

Rebecca Blackwell / AP Demba Diaw holds up lead extracted from a spent car battery as he explains how lead pollution killed his 4-year-old daughter in September.

"It's when you get to Third World countries where you don't have regulations or attempts to control the movement of this product that you see these kind of tragedies occurring," says Maurice Desmarais, executive director of Battery Council International, a U.S.-based trade group.

Although North America and Europe continue to be the world's biggest buyers of cars, fewer and fewer car batteries are made there. Manufacturing has moved where labor is cheaper and environmental protections regulations are more lenient, or at least more leniently enforced.

"There's not a developing country where this isn't happening," says Perry Gottesfeld, of OK International.

Most in Thiaroye say they will never go back to sifting dirt for lead. But some still don't believe it is dangerous.

Mohamadou Diagne, a scrap metal trader, says he hasn't bought any lead since the poisonings became known. But he says he grew up cracking open batteries for lead, and he hasn't been poisoned. He has not had his blood tested for lead.

"My father is 75. He's never had any problems," he says.

Poisoned earth
An Indian buyer about a half-mile away from the town still has a large yard full of battery casings and sacks of lead pellets. The company used to buy some of the lead dug up in Thiaroye.

Rebecca Blackwell / AP A 6-year-old boy suffering from neurological impairment due to lead poisoning is attached by a cord to his hospital bed as he undergoes long-term detoxification at a hospital in Thiaroye, Senegal, on Sept. 9.

Workers there confirm that they ship the lead and batteries out of the country but won't give further details. The owner declined a number of requests for an interview.

The government has stripped the top layer of dirt from the roads with earthmovers and is paying the hospital bills of anyone sickened by the lead. That's at least 55 children to start, and likely more once the testing is finished.

The World Health Organization says there's still so much lead in the ground that the area is toxic. The government wants to relocate the entire neighborhood. But Demba Diaw says the government just wants to profit from the lead in their earth, and Coumba says this is her only home.

Like many other families, the Diaws are too poor and too rooted to move. So they will stay where the lead poisons the earth.

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