Associated Press (AP)
UN: Nairobi Dump Site Sickens Children
Friday 5 October 2007
By Malkhadir M. Muhumed
NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) ? Harrison Juma lives on the edge of one of Africa's biggest garbage dumps, and the toxic smoke from burning trash has leeched into his clothes, his hair ? and the 15-year-old's lungs.
"I don't sleep soundly and I always cough at night," Juma told The Associated Press on Friday at his school near the Dandora waste site. "I even cough during class and lose my concentration."
Sitting just five miles from the capital's center, Dandora seriously harms the health of children who live nearby and is polluting all of Nairobi, a United Nations study said Friday. It said asthma, anemia and skin infections are endemic among the children in slums around the site.
The report from the United Nations Environment Program was the latest in a series of studies highlighting problems in the poor nations of Africa and other continents, where a lack of zoning and inadequate policing of the rules that exist lead to unhealthy situations like Dandora.
According to the World Health Organization, a quarter of all diseases affecting mankind are attributable to environmental risks. More than 4.7 million children under 5 die each year from environmentally related illnesses, WHO said.
The 30-acre Dandora dump takes in some 2,000 tons of garbage daily, including industrial and medical waste like used syringes. The U.N. study found high levels of lead, mercury and cadmium at the site and surrounding slums in eastern Nairobi.
Nearly half the soil samples from the area had lead levels almost 10 times higher than usual. Lead can cause such problems as low birth weight and memory and learning problems.
"We had anticipated some tough and worrisome findings, but the actual results are even more shocking than we had imagined at the outset," said Achim Steiner, the U.N. agency's executive director.
The study found that half of 328 children tested had lead concentrations in their blood exceeding the internationally accepted level. Most of them, like Juma, suffer respiratory problems.
Children stream into the sprawling dump every day to scavenge for plastic bags and scrap metal to sell, picking through enormous piles of stinking rubbish that have risen over the past three decades. On windy days, smoke sweeps across the nearby slums.
The Nairobi River, which many people use to bathe and to wash clothes, runs beside the dump, extending environmental and health risks to the communities living downstream, the report said.
"We always victimize the poor," said Hassan Omar Hassan of Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. "There should be a mechanism to manage the waste here."
Daniele Moschetti, a local priest who participates in the Dandora Antidumping Community, said the authorities need to clean up the site and deal with the health problems of nearby residents. "Give these people a chance to live longer," he said.
Benjamin Njenga, a city councilman, said Nairobi doesn't have the money to manage the waste now but he hopes funds will be available by next year from international donors and Kenya's government. There was no estimate on how much a cleanup would cost.
http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gCX-shaTeW7NAsUijxfFe6kOYuFAD8S387002
(This story was also covered by the International Herald Tribune, Yahoo News, WTOPnews.com, boston.com World News, The Huffington Post,)
http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/10/06/africa/AF-GEN-Kenya-Capital-Dump.php
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071005/ap_on_re_af/kenya_capital_dump
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=105&sid=1262208
http://www.boston.com/news/world/africa/articles/2007/10/05/un_nairobi_dump_site_sickens_children/
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/huff-wires/20071005/kenya-capital-dump/
