| An African Town is Poisoned by Lead from Car Batteries | |
 At first when people took ill Thiaroye Sur Mer on the outskirts of Dakar they thought it was malaria. When there was no response to medication they applied for an investigation by health authorities. By this time 18 children had died, street dogs had disappeared, chickens were dying and the goats could not stand up.
Health authorities from the West did an investigation and what they found was neither polio, tuberculosis, aids nor malaria but lead poisoning. The earth was laced with lead from many years of extracting it from old car batteries to make weights for fishing nets. When the price of lead increased the local people began to sift out the old discarded pellets which littered the earth in the streets. They would fill bags of earth to take home where they sifted the lead out of the dust. Children breathing in this dust began to fall ill. Then over a period of 5 months from October 2007 to March 2008 they began to die and women began to have stillbirths. At least 950 people have been continually exposed to the lead dust in the neighbourhood. The clean up began in March but residents say it has not been extensive enough with sacks of pellets still lying about during the rainy season. The government has stripped the top layer of dirt from the roads with earth movers. Blood tests run on relatives of the dead children showed levels of lead to be 1000 micrograms per litre. Brain development in a child is impaired by just 100 micrograms per litre. The tragedy of Thiaroye Sur Mer is one instance of how globalisation of a modern tool such as a car battery can cause havoc in the developing world. altered circulation patterns could then move the warmth over land areas.
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