Newspaper review 3

Title: Killer Batteries poison town
Date: 4 Jan 2009
Section: Straits Times (Science and Tech)

Summary
In this report, a town in Africa was experiencing unexplainable deaths. This was first seen in the animals as they started behaving in a very unnatural manner. The goats refused to stand up and were silent, and then it affected the chicken, Chicken died first by handfuls then by the masses. Now it was becoming serious as suddenly the toddlers and children. Toddlers stopped talking and their legs gave out. Women birthed stillborns. Infants withered and died.

Some said that the where cursed while others said it was their families that were cursed. Many doctors on the other hand thought that it was tuberculosis or malaria which is common in developing countries. 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. Instead they found lead.

They discovered that the ground was laced with lead that came from the years of extracting lead batteries. So when the price of lead increased fourfold, the residents started to dig up earth and separate the lead.

According to the World Health organisation, the area is still contaminated even after 10 months of clean up efforts.

This is a perfect example of how a modern tool of globalisation and progress has caused the under side of our social structure to reap the consequences of innovation. And also has wrecked the lives of people of less developed countries. The main cause of this due to huge scale industries looking for a cheap source of labour to do their dirty work and also due to the increases in demand for cars especially in China and India. About 70 percent of lead production is taken up by the making of car batteries

My Thoughts
I feel that this incident in Thiaroye Sur Mer (Senegal) is one that is reflected not only in their but all across the world where people from the lower levels of society suffer so that we could have a more convenient life. They have to earn a living the hard way but have to do it so as to survive. The need to earn money and earn it fast is why most of these people leave their pervious line of occupation and work in such dangerous occupations. My heart really goes out for these people but in the end it is still unavoidable. We could play our part and start to commute using the public transport instead of using private cars. True it gets you a little bit faster to where you want to go but think about, is those extra few minutes really worth a human being’s life?

-Justin-