Hot and toxic piles of rice husk ash pollute and threaten rice-producing communities in Bangladesh. Bangladesh is the world’s third largest rice producer, with 36 million metric tons of rice produced in 2020 alone. This bounty has come at a cost to some local communities in the form of rice husk pollution. This was one of the pollution problems identified earlier this year by local residents at a workshop organized by Pure Earth Bangladesh and local partner The Hunger Project, in the district of Naogaon, where over 1200 rice and husking mills are located. The day-long event, “Workshop on Env ..read more

The Pure Earth Mexico team and friends at the launch of Barrio Con Barro. Intern Yanet Garcia is second from right. Recently, I had the opportunity to represent my home, New York, in a place that has long held great meaning to my upbringing–Mexico. I traveled to La Roma (the city made famous in the Oscar-winning movie of the same name) for the launch of Barrio Con Barro.  Pure Earth Mexico’s Barrio con Barro campaign aims to spread awareness and access to lead-free pottery across the country. The event brought together potters, chefs, politicians, and other community leaders to celebrat ..read more

  “From today, I declare that I am taking cognizance of this issue and we shall frame projects so that we can drive the eradication of lead exposures as soon as possible.” — Ahmed Shamim Al Razi, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change, Bangladesh. This is the kind of commitment that the people of Bangladesh, the 4th most lead impacted country of the world, needed to hear from the Additional Secretary, Ahmed Shamim Al Razi, Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change. Pure Earth Bangladesh ignited this response and initiated this timely and important discussion by hos ..read more

This post was originally published in USAID’s Urban Links. Larah Ibañez was preparing a report on childhood lead poisoning for the government of the Philippines earlier this year when she discovered that the country’s Expanded National Nutrition Survey (ENNS), conducted every three years, included the collection of blood samples. “I knew immediately that we had to seize this tremendous opportunity to identify children poisoned by lead.  They were already measuring a wide range of nutritional status parameters; why not add lead to the list?” recalled Ibañez, the Philippines Country Direc ..read more

A woman walks along the coast in Senegal, one of the five pilot countries of the ChemObs project, including Kenya, Tanzania, Gabon, and Ethiopia. Among the top ten countries with the highest rates of death attributed to pollution, six of them are in Africa, according to the Global Alliance on Health and Pollution. Africa also suffers from a high incidence of DALYs (Disability-Adjusted Life Years) from pollution, exceeded in this respect only by Southeast Asia. In 2019, Pure Earth was invited to join the Chemical Observatory Project, or ChemObs for short, a partnership between UNEP, WHO and t ..read more

Workshop participants used a network mapping exercise in order to identify the most influential actors in their community. Post-it notes with stars signify highly influential groups and people, such as government officials or tea estate owners, who will play the most important role in implementing changes. Earlier this year, Pure Earth Bangladesh and a local partner, We Are Friends For Human (WAFFH), hosted workshops on the harmful effects of pollution on human health. The workshops were primarily attended by tea estate workers, a marginalized, multi-ethnic group, whose health has been large ..read more

In a new report, think tank Research Priorities acknowledges Pure Earth as the “largest organization working on lead exposure,” and recommends Pure Earth as a leading organization with effective solutions. The Global Lead Exposure Report from researchers David Bernard and Jason Schukraft draws on extensive research and several interviews with experts in lead exposure. They observe and we agree, “Lead exposure appears to be neglected relative to the size of the problem.” The authors go on to single out Pure Earth as one of the few organizations they would recommend: If one wanted to fund ..read more

Pure Earth toxic site investigators at a gold mining site in Colombia. When Pure Earth investigators visited a gold ore processing plant in the Colombian town of Remedios, they found dangerous levels of mercury in the air. This plant was nestled in an urban area, alongside a school, market, and church, endangering about 3,000 people. There was an important need to raise awareness about the impacts of this toxic substance. Located in the Department of Antioquia, Remedios is one of the municipalities with the highest gold production in the region, with challenges in terms of formalization and ..read more

Last year, Pure Earth and UNICEF confirmed in The Toxic Truth report that lead poisoning is affecting children globally on a massive and previously unknown scale. The toll? 1 in 3 children globally (around 800 million kids) have elevated lead levels. Now, BBC’s Business Daily has followed up with a report, citing our research and solutions, on a major source of childhood lead poisoning in low and middle-income countries: the informal and substandard recycling of used lead-acid batteries. The BBC podcast is just one of three currently in the news –  Vox’s The Weeds and The Coming Cle ..read more

Students at a school in Bangladesh The March 2021 issue of The Lancet Planetary Health journal includes an important paper that supports Pure Earth’s previous publications asserting the extent of the childhood lead poisoning crisis in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). The paper, Blood lead levels in low-income and middle-income countries: a systematic review, concludes that an estimated 632 million children in 34 LMICs have elevated blood lead levels suggestive of lead poisoning. The study, a collaborative effort by researchers from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia, Universi ..read more