Vast African dump poisons children

By Andrew Cawthorne and Jeremy Clarke

NAIROBI (Reuters) - Willis Ochieng, 10, scavenges through smoking refuse piled as high as a house at one of Africa's biggest rubbish mountains, his friends sitting nearby sucking on dirty plastic bottles of noxious yellow glue.

Located near slums in the east of the Kenyan capital Nairobi, the open dump receives some 2,000 tonnes of garbage daily. A U.N. study published on Friday says it is seriously harming the health of children and polluting the city.

"I have been coming here with my friends since I was eight," Willis told Reuters. "We come every day from the morning to the night. We come for plastic bags, anything metal we can sell."

As he spoke, maribu storks circled amid hundreds of red and green plastic bags blown by the breeze over the 30-acre Dandora site. At his feet, rats picked through the fetid, stinking heap.

"I want to go to school but I need money to buy food and help my mother," said the boy, dressed in a ragged grey T-shirt and shorts.

Friday's study, commissioned by the Nairobi-based U.N. Environment Programme (UNEP), found that half of 328 children tested round the site had lead concentrations in their blood exceeding the internationally accepted level.

While hundreds of residents in the area rely on scavenging for income, it is mainly children who wade through the dump.

Exposed to pollutants from heavy metals and toxins in the site's soil, water and air, almost half the youths tested suffered from respiratory diseases including chronic bronchitis and asthma, UNEP said.