African Town Poisoned by Lead From Car Batteries
Battery Lead in Soil has Fatal Impact
In what looks to be another case for added motivation to see automobile manufacturers move from acid-lead batteries to lithium-ion, Associated Press reporter Heidi Vogt just released a tragic story of an African town who has seen some of its citizens suffer from lead poisoning. Pets and farm animals were the first to feel the effects of the large amounts of lead in their soil, children and pregnant woman were next to be stricken-
“The mysterious illness killed 18 children in this town on the fringes of Dakar, Senegal’s capital, before anyone in the outside world noticed. When they did — when the TV news aired parents’ angry pleas for an investigation, when the doctors ordered more tests, when the West sent health experts — they did not find malaria, or polio or AIDS, or any of the diseases that kill the poor of Africa.
They found lead.
The dirt here is laced with lead left over from years of extracting it from old car batteries. So when the price of lead quadrupled over five years, residents started digging up the earth to get at it. The World Health Organization says the area is still severely contaminated, 10 months after a government cleanup.”
Category: Battery News
This is a serious issue that falls close to home. Many of us take for granted the soil under our feet. Dirt is dirt. But really it has a long term memory retaining many things including beneficial mychorizae as well as toxins that leach into the soil.
If you live near a landfill, chances are numerous toxins have leached into nearby soils and water supplies. Diseases such as Leukemia have been linked to toxins (i.e. Benzene) in the soil. This is a very real and scary issue especially since many authorities see this as opening Pandora’s Box to lawsuits by admitting to possible contamination and actively performing soil tests that may result in very large cleanup campaigns.