Saturday, April 23 would be marked the world over as world earth day under the theme- Invest in Our Planet.
In Ghana, a variety of pressing issues make this day an important one especially around this time. The world is faced with a climate crisis with its attendant concerns for the safety of the earth and the people who live on it.
Pollution in all forms, is at an all-time high with Accra, the country’s capital, recording air quality which is 49.6 times higher than the WHO annual air quality guideline value.
We at Pure Earth Ghana have been working since 2020 to also draw attention to key environmental challenges like lead and mercury pollution across the country. Through our work with partners like the Ghana Health Service, Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) we are working to address some of these environmental challenges. Through Pure Earth’s Toxic Site Identification Project (TSIP), we have discovered more 205 toxic sites across the country with excessive heavy metal pollution such as Lead and Mercury.
This has serious consequences for the health of the citizenry especially children and young people.
As the world marks this important day, we seize the opportunity to remind state actors and all other stakeholders within the country’s health sector to begin tangible steps aimed at reducing these risks. We urge local assemblies to strictly enforce sanitation by-laws that could help address indiscriminate disposal of waste especially items that may contain lead.
As the theme of the celebration is, we call of government to invest in programmes and initiatives that would continue to protect our environment and its people.
As part of activities marking the day here in Ghana, Pure Earth would be holding a day’s durbar with students of the Labone Senior High School to help increase awareness around environmental issues in Ghana and across the world.
ABOUT PURE EARTH
Pure Earth, previously called Blacksmiths Institute, is an American not-for-profit founded in 1999 with offices in 25 countries around the world.
We work to identify, clean up, and solve pollution problems in low- and middle-income countries, where high concentrations of toxic pollution have devastating health impacts, especially on children.
Pure Earth’s work focuses on two key pollutants: lead and mercury.
The Global Lead Program works on reducing lead poisoning from three key sources poisoning millions of children in low- and middle-income countries: the unsafe and informal recycling of used lead-acid (car) batteries; lead-glazed pottery, and contaminated spices.
The Global Mercury Program works to reduce mercury from artisanal and small scale gold mining communities around the world by training miners to go mercury free, and helping miners.
