Lead: Metal that has no ‘safe’ level

Eight years ago, in 2008, a metal refinery was set up in Owino Uhuru, an informal settlement located 8km from Mombasa town.

The company, appropriately named Metal Refineries, refined lead – a heavy metal – from used car batteries and to get the work done, they hired casual and support stuff from the neighbourhood.

Phyllis Omido, then only an ambitious career lady, was hired in 2009 as the administration manager.

“Part of my assignment was to move around the community and ask them to give consent for setting up of the factory. I implored them, telling them that they would get jobs,” Phyllis told Standard journalists in an interview.

Little did she know the impact working in the factory would have on her until she became pregnant. Unknown to her, the air she breathed was saturated with lead molecules and this ended up affecting her baby’s health.

“When he was born and still nascent, my son suffered from a spate of strange illnesses. It was all very weird. Someone suggested that it could be lead and when he was tested, he was found to have very high levels in his blood,” she said.

Furious, she called her boss, a man of Indian origin, and broke the news to him. To her shock, the man responded nonchalantly, chiding her that: “In this industry, you cannot survive if you do not have protective calcium tablets.”

But she was in no mood for such condescending verbatim. Phyllis demanded her employers pay her son’s hospital bill – which was fast approaching Sh300,000 – to which the factory responded affirmatively.

“I was hurt that I had been lied to by the owners of the factory and now knew full well that the factory was putting us all at risk. At Owino Uhuru we are raising a generation of poor children whose IQs are compromised and hence priming them for failure. In so doing, we are perpetuating the cycle,” she says.

Today, Phyllis admits it was wrong for the factory to be set up in Owino Uhuru noting its presence hurt residents more than it benefited them.

It is only after operating for nearly five years that the full extent of the damage Metal Refineries had on the environment and human life – as well as wellbeing – could sufficiently be tallied.

In an expose done by KTN in 2015, more than 2,000 deaths in Owino Uhuru were confirmed. Fifty five residents of Owino Uhuru underwent blood tests which were carried out by a team of Lancet pathologists while nine children, picked randomly, were tested for brain function and aptitude.

Findings from the investigations were startling: 100 per cent of those tested for lead had metal in their blood – albeit in varying proportions. The least affected had between one and four parts per million (ppm) of lead while the most affected exhibited as much as 38ppm.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) classifies lead as a dangerous metal and does not have any ‘safe level’ recommendations on it. If even a single lead molecule is found in the blood stream of a human being, it is considered dangerous.

Paeditrician, Dr Supa Tunje, is worried about the impact lead has on the health and wellbeing of a growing child compared to an adult.

“Children’s nervous system, their brain and mental organisation develop most before the child gets to two years of age,” she says. “It is therefore extremely important to keep tabs on what they assimilate into their bodies at this time.”

It is for the same reason that WHO advices on exclusive breastfeeding for the first six months and thereafter supplemented breastfeeding until the baby turns two.

“The food they eat, the water they drink, everything they consume – directly impacts their brain capacity and potential for good health in future,” Dr Tunje says.

In Owino Uhuru, it turned out, children took in lead with every gulp of air, with every bit of of food they swallowed and water they sipped.

The results were an avalanche of ill health - a direct contradiction to what residents had been promised when the company was setting shop. Symptoms ranged from diarrhoea, scabies, scaly skin, liver cirrhosis and more including a stunted IQ.

“One of my children, whose peers are in class eight, is stuck in class two. He is not as sharp as the others. Another one seems to be following the same path,” Eric Otieno, a father in Owino Uhuru, who worked at Metal Refineries lamented.

Of the nine children tested for aptitude – basic eye, hand, muscle and brain coordination – only two showed normal level development. The remaining showed ‘slowed pace in thinking’ as the verdict read.

“Lead is not only dangerous for the body’s health, in children it hampers brain development and when such damage occurs at such an early age, it is more or less permanent,” Dr Tunje observes.

Metal Refineries, it emerged, dumped waste straight into the living spaces of Owino Uhuru. This factory’s waste – laden with lead, sulphur and other chemical waste – percolated into the soil and ended up contaminating drinking water for residents who fetched their water from a nearby stream. Tests carried out by SGS confirmed this.

Their crops and animals also accumulated the chemicals such that meals served in their homes contained the usual servings of protein, starch, vitamins, and now, a metal.

According to the WHO, petrol, paint, solder in canned foods and water pipes are all low-level lead sources which get the metal into the body through mundane pathways: air, household dust, automobile emissions, industrial emissions, soil, water and food. WHO recognises the amount and extent of damage lead has on human health. In a 2000 sessional paper, the world health body documents the following about lead:

“At high levels of human exposure there is damage to almost all organs and organ systems, most importantly the central nervous system, kidneys and blood, culminating in death at excessive levels. At low levels, psychological and neurobehavioral functions are impaired.”

According to Dr Tunje, bad nutrition in the first 1,000 days (until a child turns two) is crucial in determining the child’s brain ability and future health. Ingesting lead within these first 1,000 days makes the situation much worse.