“Children here are very forgetful, including my child” ~ Mary’s story

Mary (not her real name) is one of several case studies in our recent report: Life in the World’s Most Polluted town: The origins of lead contamination in Kabwe, its impacts on children, and the case for corporate accountability.

“Lead pollution affects me and my children, especially my daughter who is 14 years of age. Her thinking is very slow and she mostly fails to concentrate in class at school. She is very forgetful.

Her health is not ok. When she is coughing it gets intense and she has flu most of the time, bleeding from the nose, low body weight and a poor appetite. She like to eat soil and she eats it in huge quantities. It’s very difficult to stop her because she hides it most of the time and I know that it’s the very soil that contains lead.

We took her to the clinic and it was discovered that she has lead in her blood, so drugs were given to her. I have not taken her for a retest to check if she is free from lead now that she has been on treatment. But I have noticed no change in her health; she experiences the same challenges as before.

As a parent this does not make me feel good because her health is disturbed and so is her schooling. It’s very worrying when I think about her future seeing that she is a girl child and without a good education she might end up on the streets.

Lead is everywhere in our surroundings. It’s coming from the old mine and it is reaching my child. It is very difficult to stop a child from playing in the soil because that’s where they are found most of the time. Children here are very forgetful, including my child.

When it comes to growing crops, I have given up. It feels like a wastage of seeds because each time they don’t grow well or not at all because of the lead in the soil. I wish I had a small garden so we could be eating fresh and healthy vegetables.

Having to buy vegetable every day is very expensive and we cannot afford it, so my family’s diet is not balanced.”