An international study has found extensive lead contamination around lead battery recycling plants in Nigeria and six other African countries.  The contamination levels in soil ranged up to 14% lead with average concentrations of 2% lead.

Lead battery recycling is a growing hazardous industry throughout Africa. In addition to vehicle applications, lead batteries are used to store solar and wind power, and are in demand for backup power for computers, cell phone towers, and home use. Lead pollution at these sites poses significant health risks to the public.

Titled: “Soil Contamination from Lead Battery Manufacturing and Recycling in Seven African Countries”, the study is published in the journal Environmental Research. It tested areas surrounding 16 authorised industrial facilities in Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Mozambique, Nigeria, Tanzania, and Tunisia.

In Nigeria, the Lagos-based Sustainable Research and Action for Environmental Development (SRADev) Nigeria collected and analysed a total of 21 soil samples from lead battery recycling factory sites in Lagos and Ogun states. Samples were reportedly tested in EMSL Analytical Inc, USA. Lead levels around lead battery recycling plants in Nigeria ranged up to 29,000parts per million (ppm) outside the facilities tested and 140,000ppm inside the facility tested. Fifteen (71%) of the samples were greater than 400 ppm or the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) limit for soil. Levels below 80 ppm are considered safe for children.

“There are no industry specific regulations controlling the release of lead from these recycling plants or to protect workers and children in surrounding communities,” said Leslie Adogame, Executive Director of SRADev Nigeria.

Few countries in Africa have adequate regulations governing the operations and emissions from lead battery recycling. Adogame added: “Lead battery manufacturing and recycling are extremely hazardous industries and companies should be required to publicly disclose their air emissions on an annual basis.”

Victor Fabunmi, Programme Officer of SRADev Nigeria noted: “One of the facilities tested in Ota (Ogun State) is located within approximately 20 metres of a residential district with about 200 inhabitants. At another facility in Ogijo (Ogun State), waste water run-off from the factory is used to irrigate surrounding farmlands.”

Perry Gottesfeld, Executive Director of Occupational Knowledge International, USA and the lead author of the study, said: “There is an immediate need to limit lead emissions from this industry and to test children’s exposure levels in nearby communities.” He added that many countries including Nigeria need to develop laboratory capacity to routinely test blood lead levels.

The authors of the study called on governments to ensure that plant operators set aside funds for facility closures to ensure that lead soil contamination is not left behind. One such site around a shuttered lead battery recycling plant in Mombasa, Kenya that has never been remediated is responsible for poisoning hundreds of nearby residents since the plant was closed in 2009, stated the authors.

The United Nations Environment Assembly (UNEA) adopted a resolution during its meeting in 2017 calling on governments to do more to control hazardous lead emissions from lead battery recycling.

Lead is easily melted down for reuse and therefore lead batteries are rarely discarded as waste. Recycling lead by melting down used batteries (also known as secondary smelting) is a profitable business throughout the world. Unfortunately, recycling lead from used batteries is known to result in high lead exposures that can cause severe health effects and contaminate the environment unless adequate equipment is used and procedures to minimize emissions are followed.

In many developing countries individuals working on the side of the road or in “backyard smelters” carry out lead battery recycling. Because of the primitive nature of these operations and their enormous number (estimated to be in the tens of thousands) the control of lead poisoning from the contamination of homes and the environment is a major challenge. In 2008 at least 18 children died and many more were poisoned from lead in Dakar, Senegal after exposure to contaminated dust and soil from the recycling of used lead batteries.

Large-scale recycling facilities are also known to be significant sources of lead exposure in many parts of the world. There are dozens of examples of informal and even large lead battery recycling plants that have been the source of lead poisoning among workers and local residents.

The Managing Director of Niger Delta River Basin Development Authority (NDRBDA), Mr Tonye David-West, on Friday, January 19, 2018 said youth unemployment and environmental pollution were some of the challenges hindering the region’s economic development.

David-West, during a courtesy call on the Managing Director of the News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) in Abuja, said the challenges needed to be promptly surmounted.

“Pollution which is inherent in water, ecosystem and all other areas is a big issue which should be tackled immediately,’’ he said.

The Development Authority managing director however said the proposed Niger Delta Agriculture Endowment Fund, when operational, would help in addressing the myriad of problems facing the region.

“The basin authority is setting up a technical committee to spearhead the realisation of the project. There is the need for all stakeholders to address the problem of the Niger Delta.

David-West said the invasion of black sooth, which was polluting the environment in Port Harcourt, has become an emergency.

“If you live in Port Harcourt, you cannot walk barefooted, the black sooth is everywhere. That is why we must begin to seek ways to cleanse our environment,’’ he said.

Alhaji Yahaya Ndu, a consultant on the David-West entourage, added that the project would help in promoting agriculture, aquaculture, tourism and youth empowerment.

“All hands must be on deck to make it a reality,’’ he said.

Ndu said development partners and corporate organisations could use such projects as a corporate social responsibility towards overall development.

“We on our part have studied the terrain and we have confidence that given the right atmosphere and partnership, we can generate solid funding for the youths to contribute to national development.’’

He added that partnering with NAN was an opportunity to carry out the message of the Niger Delta to a larger audience.

The NAN MD, Mr Bayo Onanuga, while responding, said agriculture was the mainstay for Nigeria’s development and it could be a great revenue earner for socio-economic development.

“The role of young persons in restoring peace to the region, when properly engaged in agriculture and its value chain, is very important.’’

Onanuga expressed the agency’s commitment to support laudable projects towards overall national development.

By Tosin Kolade and Okon Okon

The Lagos State Government and the environmental utility group contracted to implement the Cleaner Lagos Initiative (CLI), Visionscape Sanitation Solutions, have intensified evacuation of waste in black spots and illegal dump sites across the metropolis.

The authorities disclosed in a statement made available to EnviroNews on Friday, January 19, 2018 that evacuation of filth had been carried out and still ongoing in major areas including Falomo Bridge, Obalende, Ikoyi, Mushin, Ikeja, Ipaja, Agege, Oshodi, among others.

The clean-up exercise, which is said to be simultaneously going on across the state, is in line with “Operation Deep Clean,” a stop-gap measure designed to keep the city clean pending the full transition to the new waste management policy of the state government encapsulated in the CLI.

The CLI, it was gathered, was established to address, enforce and regulate the challenges in the solid waste management systems within the state in line with global best practices.

Speaking after observing the evacuation of heaps of refuse in Ikeja Along Bus Stop on the Lagos-Abeokuta Expressway, a resident of the area, Mr Babatunde Bamidele, commended government and Visionscape for the exercise, saying it was obvious that a good job was being done.

He said: “What they have done here is very good. Everywhere is clean now. I will only appeal to them to keep up the good work by coming regularly.”

Another resident, Tanwa Babarinde, who operates a public toilet in Ikeja, urged government to designate officials to monitor the area especially at night to prevent indiscriminately dumping of refuse.

She said: “I like what Governor Akinwunmi Ambode is doing to make the state clean. The Visionscape people have been here to clean up this area and they did a very good job.

“My only appeal to the state government is to designate their officials here especially at night to prevent indiscriminate dumping of waste because anytime they clean up the illegal dump site here, before the next day, you will see heaps of refuse again meaning that some people are coming here to dump waste at night,” Babarinde said.

It will be recalled that the operators of Private Sector Participation (PSP) in waste management and the Lagos State Government had agreed to amicably settle a court case which delayed full implementation of CLI.

According to the statement, some people go out in the middle of the night to dump waste on a large scale on the roads. But the government says it has vowed to go all out after such elements and punish them accordingly in line with the law.

The state government has also urged residents to properly bag their waste and put in front of their houses for evacuation by officials of the Cleaner Lagos Initiative and other assigned bodies.

Communities around Kangimi Dam in Igabi Local Government Area of Kaduna State have raised an alarm over the deteriorating state of the dam. They fear that if action is not urgently taken a disastrous failure could occur. This situation reminded me of a similar alarm that was raised by cracks on Tiga Dam in 1988, 30 years ago. In response to that alarm I wrote an article titled Before Tiga Dam Fails. It was published in The Guardian (Lagos) on February 23, 1988. Due to the fact that its import applies to the current situation I have reproduced it in full hereunder:

Disaster has not yet struck at Kano State’s Tiga Dam so there appears to be no sense of urgency in our slow crawl towards diffusing the ever-shortening fuse line. Major cracks have reportedly been evident on the embankment of Tiga Dam since late 1986 but, so far, nothing more than exploratory moves have been made towards repairing it. By all standards, we have a calamity on our hands, a smoldering keg of gunpowder, but it seems only a tragedy will make us move.

Dams have been known to collapse without notice. Our Tiga Dam has, however, kept us on notice for quite some time now. In France, for instance, Malpasset Dam collapsed in December, 1959 without warning. The ensuing flood eliminated everything in its path for a distance about 5km. indeed, at the town of Frejus, over 6.4km downstream, over 300 persons lost their lives.

The greatest dam tragedy in recent memory may, however, be the one in Italy in 1963. The Italian Vaiont Dam’s failure was triggered by a landslide from an adjoining mountain side. Over 2,000 Italians lost their lives. The Americans learnt a lesson from that disaster and quickly evacuated residents near Los Angeles’ Baldwin Hills Reservoir just before it collapsed also in 1963.

Engineers have since accepted that one of the uses of structural failures is their educational value. Even where it is not a structural failure, the signals of an impending disaster may be read clear and early and people evacuated out of harm’s way promptly. When disaster strikes, relief materials and refugee camps are scant consolations. It is gratifying that the authority in-charge of the Tiga Dam acted in early 1987 (March, to be precise) in getting in experts from the USA to study the cracks in the embankment which turned out to be “both longitudinal and transverse” and may cost nothing less than N26 million to mend.

Although it is not yet clear when real action will commence in the salvaging of this Kano State’s “main source of domestic and irrigation water supply”, it is wise to mention the past performance of the invited American experts in their own country. The Bureau of Reclamation (Bruce) has been designing and building dams since the early years of this century. The Teton Dam in eastern Idaho, designed by BuRec, failed in June 1976, killing 11 persons and injuring more than 2,000 others. Property worth over N4 billion and more than 7,000 homes and businesses were destroyed.

According to the Engineering News Record (ENR) of January 13 1977, the report of the panel reviewing the failure of the Teton Dam blamed “inadequate design and field monitoring by the Bureau of Reclamation for the breach, resulting in flooding that covered 300 square miles.” The report further stated that BuRec concerned itself with “keeping water from seeping through the dam rather than taking measures to render harmless whatever water did pass.” Thus, because of inadequate drainage, the embankment’s impermeable core material was eroded, eventually allowing water to burst through the dam’s downstream face.

The final report on the Teton Dam disaster was reviewed in the February 14, 1980 issue of ENR. Although it was noted that BuRec has since taken steps to avert other tragedies, the report called into “question the integrity of the Bureau of Reclamation’s other 290 dams.” In fact, the BuRec Commissioner even said that they would commission independent consultants to review BuRec’s major new dams instead of just inviting them for specific advice as had been their practice.

Dam safety appears to be one area in which engineers do not have sufficient answers. In the United States where a programme of dam inspection has commenced, the percentage of hazardous dams increases with the number of inspections. Check this out: in 1978, 20% of the inspected dams were found to be unsafe. In 1979, this had increased to 29% and, by March 1980, the figure was 32%.

Due to varying legislations, some states in the USA place less emphasis on design and construction control. At a time, West Virginia had a staggering 74% unsafe dams. Generally, leakages have been found to be greatest culprit in dam failures in recent times. Other identified major causes include: outlet work damage, slope instability, inadequate slope protection, overtopping, deterioration and embankment deformation.

Lax dam safety programmes have been noted as a serious problem. In some countries, the affluent create lakefront properties by building small private dams. Since they would not want to submit to strenuous checks, they fight against inspection laws and weaken safety programmes. 1976 witnessed a number of earth fill dam failures not the least being Pakistan’s Bolan Dam which failed in September of that year. The dam had no spillway and thereby encouraged an unmanageable build-up of water in the reservoir. The water, sadly, did the sensible thing – it just swept over the top, destroyed the dam and swept away 26 villages.

We do not have a long history of large dams in our country and, mercifully, failures have not resulted in catastrophes yet. The greatest tragedy associated with dam building in Nigeria remains the massacre of dispossessed peasants (Bakolori, 26/4/80), who resisted uncompensated appropriation of their land. The disquieting news about the Tiga Dam should attract urgent actions to avert a disaster. We have had sufficient notice, by all standards. The reported longitudinal and transverse cracks could be due to a number of factors which our geologists, hydrologists, civil engineers and other experts should bring to the notice of the authorities to underline the urgency to avert impending tragedy.

We do not know that what the Nigerian Society of Engineers has done about dam safety measures in Nigeria so far. If they have not done much in this direction, they need no further urging.

For a dam which watered the field that yielded 19,296 tonnes of rice valued at N19 million (The Guardian, 22/1/88) last year alone, N26 million is not a staggering amount for its repair. The danger now posed to life and property should not be left unaddressed for a day longer. We have sufficient lessons to learn from other lands, we do not require a dam disaster now or at any other time.

By Nnimmo Bassey (Director, Health of Mother Hearth Foundation – HOMEF)