Poisoning and mining.  According to preliminary research carried out by the United Nations (UN), in the latest months at least 400 children under five year of age have lost their lives in Nigeria as a result of lead, copper and mercury poisoning, the consequence of intensive mining operations in that country.

Source: Observatorio Latinoamericano de Conflictos Ambientales (Latin American Observatory on Environmental Conflicts)

30/11/2010. According to Elisabeth Byrs, spokesperson for the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA), this rise in the number deaths is based on data produced in a preliminary report drafted by a team of experts from the UN in Nigeria, which she revealed in Geneva last Wednesday.

After the Nigerian Government discovered the deaths of at least 200 children and that another 18,000 people had been contaminated, they petitioned the OCHA to instigate an investigation into this matter.

Follow up:

After a week of research, Ms Byrs stated that the number of deaths could be higher because the initial figure was based on reports provided by the organisation Doctors Without Borders (MSF) working in collaboration with the UN group, and she believes that many cases go unrecorded.

Also, the confirmed deaths only reported children under five years of age, which is why the OCHA spokesperson thinks this figure may be higher if the contamination also affects people in other age groups, and it has not been ruled out that this figure may carry on rising as the investigation continues.

The initial results from the team analysing the levels of lead, copper and mercury contamination in five different locations, determined that water in lakes and ponds is contaminated and the concentration of mercury in the environment is a hundred times greater than than what established as safe by the World Health Organisation (WHO).

Ms Byrs warns that an urgent and coordinated response is needed to prevent more deaths.

The extraction of gold and other minerals from the Bukkuyum, Anka and Zamfara areas of northern Nigeria is the main cause of these high levels of contamination. Also, people take the extracted minerals home with them for manual sorting, compounding the levels of poisoning.

Ms Byrs also maintains that many people were not reporting new cases of poisoning because they were afraid they would not be able to continue with their work, since the Nigerian Government prevented them from doing this last week when they learnt of the first deaths.

Gold mining is a source of income for the inhabitants of these locations, but the seams also carry minerals such as lead, copper and mercury.

Poisoning from these minerals can cause irreparable damage to the nervous system in children and lead to congenital malformations during the first years of life. Those affected require specialised treatment, which most of the population cannot afford, Ms Byrs added.

In Nigeria the infant population is the most vulnerable, and the authorities there have already warned of a possible social explosion after learning that at least two million children are in living in a state of poverty, surviving on handouts by begging on the streets of Kano, the state capital of one of Nigeria’s northern districts. This figure has doubled over the last five years.

“It's a generation lost, a whole generation”, says Senator Eme Ufot Ekaette, head of the child protection committee in the Federal Parliament.

According to Abdullahi Yusuf, who lives in Kano, Nigeria’s second largest city, “the presence of these children is a social time bomb (...) these children know nothing about parental care, love and affection and therefore see everybody as the enemy and responsible for their deprivation.” Aminu Isamail Sagagi, the person in charge of the case for the state government of Kano, says that “the situation is becoming more pathetic by the day.”