Dominican Government Inaction Results in Permanent Damage to Health of Children

By Karla E General
Impunity Watch Reporter, North America

BAJOS DE HAINA, Dominican Republic - In Paraiso de Dios (God's Paradise), a neighborhood of Bajos de Haina, an abandoned automobile battery recycling plant known as Metaloxa sits atop a hill that leaches old battery lead down into the community below. Environmental experts have attributed overwhelming developmental delays and birth defects in children on the dumping of battery acid and lead into the soil where neighborhood kids played for decades.

Metaloxa was relocated in 1997 after intense community pressure when testing revealed employees had fatal levels of lead in their bloodstream. "Anything above 70, 80 or 90 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood is serious and results in swelling of the brain. These guys were at 300. I am sure they were going to die," says Null, director of New York-based Friends of Lead-Free Children. The children fared just a bit better, with 91 percent of the 147 children having lead poisoning. "Of the 20 worst children, about half can't go to school today because of permanent brain damage. Their IQs dropped to the floor. Those are irreversible damages," says Conrado Depratt, chemistry professor at the Universidad Autonoma de Santo Domingo, located twelve miles away from Paraiso de Dios.   

The Metaloxa site was ranked as one of the world's ten most polluted places by the Blacksmith Institute last year and categorized as being on par with Chernobyl in a 2006 Bloomberg Report: "Chernobyl, the site of the world's worst nuclear accident, and the town of Bajos de Haina in the Dominican Republic, a Caribbean nation known for its eco-tourism, share something in common: They both feature on a list of the world's ten worst polluted places."

Community members say the government is not acting fast enough to get the site cleaned, but Deputy Secretary of Environmental Affairs Zoila Gonzalez says "Blacksmith's list gives the impression nothing has been done, but it has been a worry for some time. It may not be as fast as we want. We don't have the money the United States or Europe may have, but we have been doing the work."

After a series of meetings last week, including with the Minister of Environment, Blacksmith president Richard Fuller said all sides have agreed to a remediation plan. "The damage to these kids is permanent. Thousands of kids, thousands, all of them, their parents, and all the kids being conceived are poisoned. But it will get cleaned up."

For more information, please see:

Dominican Today - Compares Dominican Town to Chernobyl in Pollution - 20 October 2008

Inter Press Service - Dominican Republic: Thick Smog on the Caribbean Coast - 1 February 2008

The Miami Herald - Pollution Sickens Children in Dominican Republic - 1 November 2008