Lead Battery Plant In Kenya Fatally Poisoned Children, Workers Dropped Dead From Toxicity

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A pattern was emerging in Owino Uhuru: Livestock that grazed on grass growing in the effluent of the smelter would die. Children in the village developed strange scaly patches on their skin. Women miscarried or gave birth prematurely, and infants were born with deformities. People complained of fainting spells, weakness, convulsions, bone pain, numb feet—all signs of lead poisoning. Children were dying; workers were dying; some of their wives died too, likely exposed when they washed their husbands’ lead-covered work clothes.

Omido wrote letters to the Kenyan environmental agency, the National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), demanding the smelter be shut down. She founded the Center for Justice Governance and Environmental Action (CJGEA), which tested the soil and water around the plant. They found that dust from village roofs had lead levels of 14,000 parts per million; the soil in the village where children played had up to 11,000 ppm. In the US, the Environmental Protection Agency sets a limit of 400 ppm of lead in soil where children play, and 1,200 ppm in all other soil. In Owino Uhuru, when it rained, villagers would go down to the local streams and collect water running off the lead-soaked ground for drinking and cooking. The air itself was choked with emissions from the smelter.

Omido began organizing protests. By 2012, villagers were well aware of the connection between the smelter and their deteriorating health; Omido was arrested along with 16 others from Owino Uhuru while marching down a street in Mombasa that year, calling for the smelter to be closed. In a photo of her arrest, she’s carrying a sign that says “Sentenced to Death.” She was charged with “inciting violence” and spent a night in jail. The protests began to pick up local press coverage, and under mounting public pressure, Kenya Metal Refineries EPZ finally shut down in 2014.

Omido won the prestigious Goldman Environmental Prize for her activism in 2015. But the soil in Owino Uhuru remains as toxic as it ever was while the plant was in operation, and Omido suspects the water is too; people are still falling ill and dying from lead poisoning, and likely will continue to die from heavy metal toxicity until the day Owino Uhuru is cleaned up, if it ever comes. Linette Nabwire, a 26-year-old woman from Owino Uhuru, passed away in 2016. A post-mortem found she had a blood-lead level of 238 ug/dl.

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https://qz.com/1231792/a-battery-recycling-plant-owned-by-indian-businessmen-caused-a-lead-poisoning-crisis-in-kenya/