Thiaroye-sur-Mer (Ngagne Diaw neighbourhood)

In Ngagne Diaw, a neighbourhood of Thiaroye-sur-Mer, informal recycling of used lead-acid batteries began in 1995 on an open sandy area of about 40,000 m². Car and truck batteries collected around Dakar were broken open to recover the metallic lead; the rest went into the sand, which was then sieved, bagged and sold to a scrap dealer. Towards the end of 2007 the buyer stopped coming, and residents began storing the bags of contaminated soil in their homes, sometimes under their beds.

Between November 2007 and March 2008 eighteen children aged 1 to 6 died of a rapidly progressive neurological disease: about 12% of the children of that age living in the neighbourhood. The Senegalese Ministry of Health asked the World Health Organization for help. In March 2008 the authorities removed 300 tonnes of soil and sacks of ingots and covered part of the area with clean sand, but in June measurements still found up to 209,000 mg/kg of lead in the open area, up to 182,000 mg/kg in residential areas, up to 302,000 mg/kg in the bags and up to 14,000 mg/kg indoors.

The later clean-up, led by the Blacksmith Institute with the Senegalese government, the University of Dakar, WHO and the International Lead Management Center, removed and buried the most contaminated material and cleaned public areas and 42 homes, on a budget of 250,000 dollars. More than a hundred women were trained in hydroponic growing as an alternative livelihood.