Cleaning toxic soil in Nigeria

Lead contamination as a byproduct of gold mining has killed over 400 children, and left many others sick, in Nigeria's Zamfara State over the past year. With no other source of income as lucrative, residents of the area brought ore into family compounds where women processed it with the same equipment they used in grinding grain and preparing food. The ore had a lead content and grinding the ore to retrieve the gold created a fine lead dust that has contaminated many residential compounds in at least 8 villages. TerraGraphics Environmental Engineering, based in Moscow, Idaho and the non-profit Blacksmith Institute, based in New York, responded to the crisis to help in remediating the contamination. UNICEF, WHO, CDC, the Zamfaran State government, the local emirate and village leaders have all been active participants. The French Médecins Sans Frontières (Doctors Without Borders) is treating the affected children once their home villages are remediated. Founded in 1984 by Margrit von Braun PhD '89 and husband Ian von Lindern, TerraGraphics has provided oversight and coordination on numerous remediation projects, including the Bunker Hill Superfund site in northern Idaho. They have special expertise in remediation of sites contaminated with heavy metals. Read more at Washington State Magazine's Coordinates: http://wsm.wsu.edu/coordinates

Category:

Nonprofits & Activism

Tags:

• alumna
• alumni
• children
• cleanup
• contaminated
• contamination
• engineering
• environment
• gold
• health
• lead
• mining
• nigeria
• ore
• remediation
• soil
• terragraphics
• toxic
• wsu
• zamfara