Child Rights and the Environment – The Need For Action

Children’s health has also been severely affected by exposure to chemicals from large-scale and small-scale mining operations. In one of the worst environmental health disasters in recent years, over 400 children died in Nigeria from exposure to lead-contaminated dust produced inadvertently during artisanal and small-scale gold mining.[8] Children from ethnic minority groups living in camps for the internally displaced in Kosovo have suffered lead poisoning due to contamination from a nearby industrial mine.[9] In small-scale gold mining regions in Mali, Ghana, Tanzania, the Philippines, and elsewhere, children have been exposed to toxic mercury used to process gold, and in some cases developed symptoms that are consistent with mercury poisoning.[10]
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/07/22/child-rights-and-environment-need-action