POLLUTION BLOG

   Pure Earth Ghana awareness at Greater Accra Hospital Maternal Unit Lead exposure remains a pervasive and underappreciated threat to child health globally. Although the phase-out of leaded petrol reduced ambient exposure, many children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs)...

Pure Earth researchers tested 56 kohl, kajal, and surma eyeliners available for purchase in the United States and found that more than half contained dangerous levels of lead, including some with extremely high concentrations. These findings are detailed in a...

Metal cookware is a key source of lead exposure in Ghana. A new video news piece by Nadima Umar Uthman on GHOne TV, Tracing the Toxic Pot, looks at how government regulatory authorities, such as the FDA and Ghana Health...

Lead recycled in unsafe factories is entering global supply chains and poisoning children worldwide. The Poisonous Lead Trade, a new investigative series from The Examination and The New York Times, documents how recycled lead from substandard used lead-acid battery (ULAB)...

During International Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (ILPPW) 2025, Pure Earth teams and partners across Africa, Asia, and Latin America mobilized governments, health institutions, youth groups, and the private sector around a clear message: there is no safe level of lead...

  The delegation at GreenAd formal recycling center.  Agbogbloshie, one of West Africa’s largest electronic waste sites, processes an estimated 150,000 tons of discarded electronics each year, much of it through open burning and informal recycling. Studies have shown that...

Pure Earth Ghana , in collaboration with the Environmental Protection Authority (EPA), has completed a study assessing the presence of mercury and other heavy metals in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) communities in Ghana. The assessment, funded by the Foreign,...

In Accra, Ghana, a new chapter of collaboration was launched as the All-Africa Students Union (AASU) and Pure Earth Ghana formalized their partnership with the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). The event, brought together student representatives, government agencies,...

Pure Earth is proud to be one of the implementing partners working with Bloomberg Philanthropies on a transformative new initiative to combat lead poisoning worldwide. The Bloomberg Philanthropies Lead Poisoning Prevention Initiative will tackle lead exposure—one of the most pervasive...

In a historic move to protect the health of Ghana’s children, Pure Earth, Blacksmith Initiative, alongside UNICEF and the Ghana Health Service, has signed a Declaration of National Action against Lead Poisoning. This crucial step was announced on 24th August...

Esmond Quansah, Pure Earth Ghana's Country Director, highlights the pollution problems facing his country, and how his team is working to fix it. Learn more about our work in Ghana  and follow Pure Earth Ghana on social media:  Instagram, Twitter,...

In 2021, Pure Earth launched an ambitious project to analyze the lead (Pb) content in thousands of consumer products in markets across 25 low- and middle-income countries. This project, the Rapid Market Screening (RMS),  is the first analysis of its...

2022 was a year of growth. Pure Earth programs doubled in size, enabling us to expand our focus on lead and mercury in the most impacted countries. As a result of this expansion, long-time Pure Earth officer Drew McCartor, who...

On October 20, just days before we launched our global outreach for International Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (ILPPW), we received word that Pure Earth President Richard Fuller was being recognized as one of Vox's Future Perfect 50, honoring individuals building a more perfect future. In...

The Pure Earth Club is a school club comprised of students who are being taught and nurtured to love their environment and to protect it through the reduction of pollution, not only by words but by action. They are supervised...

Pure Earth reached several milestones in 2021, including critical recognition as the most effective organization working today to solve the global childhood lead poisoning crisis! We are especially proud of this as it reflects the hard work put in by the...

Jack measuring toxic soil with Olympus XRF, Photo by Larry C. Price Q & A with Dr. Jack Caravanos, Pure Earth’s Director of Research Jack traveled to Kabwe, Zambia, last month with The Guardian environment editor Damian Carrington and Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist...

Pure Earth regional director for Africa, Judith St. Fort, and senior program officer, Russell Dowling, recently returned to Senegal to help train local toxic site investigators as part of the Toxic Sites Identification Program (TSIP). Judith and Russell brought with them dozens...

A mountain of success! Pure Earth partner GreenAd's Bennett Akuffo is shown here standing on a pile of cleanly processed plastic cable casings in Agbogbloshie, Ghana.  This is what would have been burnt, releasing polluting toxic fumes, if local recyclers...

  This post is from Lara Crampe, Pure Earth's regional director for Southeast Asia.  She is currently in Zambia working with the team on the second phase of Pure Earth’s remediation project in the Chowa neighborhood of Kabwe. This month our...

Help us make a difference in Agbogbloshie and other polluted places. Donate now to support the cleanup of polluted communities worldwide. “Kona Ne Bad” or “Burning Is Bad” – that was the message splashed across tee-shirts and posters, and shouted out through...

Fighting pollution does not just mean cleaning up toxic sites.  It also involves a lot of behind-the-scenes work that might not make the news, such as the painstaking task of identifying, mapping, and assessing contaminated hotspots around the world. This was what...

Over the past year, we have started to finally see a shift connecting the silos that have kept efforts on the environment, health and development in separate disciplines. The catalyst for much of this progress has come from the creation...

Of the many cleanups we conducted in 2015, our work in Kabwe, Zambia, was one of the highlights. Last year, thanks to private donations from supporters, Pure Earth’s team was able to return to Kabwe to start cleaning up one of the “World’s...

“I am impressed with what has been done... and this comes as a relief not only to the people of Chowa, but the entire Kabwe population. We believe that when this project is completed, more lives will be safeguarded."  --...

Almost every single child in Chowa is suffering from lead poisoning. Nearly all of Chowa's children were found to have blood lead levels that are ten to 20 times the CDC recommended level, which can be fatal. The source of the toxin?  A group...

  UPDATE: June 2015 It has been eight months since Pure Earth opened the e-waste recycling center with automated wire-stripping units. We have been assessing what is working and what is not, as we enter the next phase of the project....

 "At the hospital, he looked fine but behaved like he was losing his mind... In the evening of the same day, his fever became severe. He was restless. He later started jerking seriously with his eyes turning, and that was how...

The latest issue of Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR), the main resource for key public health information and recommendations from the CDC, features field notes from our July trip to Kabwe, where we found devastating levels of lead poisoning...

This guest post is from Ben Barber, who visited Kabwe with the Blacksmith for a Pure Earth team in July. We arrived last July in one of the world’s most toxic hotspots -- Kabwe, a city of about 200,000 just...

[caption id="attachment_20195" align="alignnone" width="650"] Seynabou and her grandson in November 2021.[/caption] Seynabou had ten children, but lost five of them.  One by one, each of her five youngest children fell ill with the same symptoms — seizures and convulsions. One by one,...

Livelihood Training For Women Uncovering Senegal's Invisible Pollution Problem Last year, Blacksmith returned to Senegal to conduct livelihood training for women so that they will not have to go back to the deadly job of backyard battery recycling in order...

Next month, Blacksmith returns to Senegal to provide livelihood training to women so that they will not have to go back to the dangerous job of backyard battery recycling--the activity that triggered the tragic lead poisoning outbreak in 2008 that killed 32 children in Thiaroye...

Reporting in before the holiday break, John Keith, Blacksmith Institute’s on-scene project manager at the Zamfara, Nigeria, lead contamination remediation project, says landfills have been construction at all five villages in the original project scope and clean soil brought to...

As you might have noticed, there has not been a new post lately on The Pollution Blog.  Part of the reason is that I have been busy with the recent and ongoing lead poisoning emergency in Nigeria. This is a...

This week, I will hand this space off to Jack Caravanos, a member of Blacksmith's Technical Advisory Board and a leading expert in lead pollution/contamination. Jack is part of part of a project in Ghana jointly funded by Blacksmith and...