The Bangladesh Chronicle

Child labour ‘rampant’ in Bangladesh factories, study reveals

The Bangladesh Chronicle

8 years ago

Child labourers exposed to toxic chemicals dying before 50, WHO says

Bangladesh tannery workers exposed to formaldehyde, sulphuric acid and more while making products for westerners

Children bag animal fat to be turned into soap. Tanneries douse animal skins in chemicals to create ‘Bengali black’ leather. Photograph: Getty Images

Children as young as eight, working in the tanneries of Bangladesh producing leather that is in demand across Europe and the USA, are exposed to toxic chemical cocktails that are likely to shorten their lives, according to a new report.

Approximately 90% of those who live and work in the overcrowded urban slums of Hazaribagh and Kamrangirchar, where hazardous chemicals are discharged into the air, streets and river, die before they reach 50, according to the World Health Organisation.

The river runs black: pollution from Bangladesh’s tanneries – in pictures

Hazaribagh is home to 95% of Bangladesh’s leather tanneries, which every day dump 22,000 cubic litres of toxic waste into Buriganga, the city’s main river and water supply.

Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

Mohammad Alamgir, 24, Mohammad Hasan, 16, and Biplop Mohammad, 13, bag animal fat that will be turned into soap. Most of the labourers in Hazaribagh work with hazardous chemicals without any safety precautions, and there have been reports of horrific workplace accidents in the factories.

Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

Abu Talib, 63, unloads leather hides from a vat of chemicals in the Phoenix Leather Complex. Talib has worked in the tannery for nine years and says that sometimes he gets itchy rashes on his skin and has breathing problems. He earns between 8,000 and 9,000 taka – £66 to £75 – a month.

Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

Dye and chemicals are emptied by the tannery Chowdhury Leather & Co into a sewer that feeds into the Buriganga river. The Bangladeshi government has been criticised for its inability to stop industrial units from releasing untreated waste into the water.

Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

Momin Mohammad brushes his teeth by the canal outside his home. He works loading and unloading leather in the tanneries, earning between 6,000 and 7,000 taka – £50 to £58 – a month. He says that living in the neighbourhood is difficult but he has no choice. Momin and his family often suffer health problems including diarrhoea, headaches and jaundice.

Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

Bilkis Bagum, 25, Mohammad Delway, and Imran Abed, both 10 years old, make leather gloves for the Bangladeshi Rolling Mills company. More than 7 million children between the ages of five and 14 are classed as working children in Bangladesh, according to Unicef.

Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

Men empty a barrel of animal waste into a canal which flows into the Buriganga river. The water in the river is now so polluted that all the fish have died. Filth and human waste have turned it into a black gel.

Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

Children play outside their home next to a polluted canal. Residents of the neighbourhood slums are exposed to extreme pollution in the air, water and soil.

Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

Boats are docked at a ghat in Hazaribagh. The tanneries export millions of pounds of leather goods around the world, including to the US and Europe.

Photograph: Allison Joyce/Getty Images

Their plight spurred the volunteer doctors of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF) to set up clinics in the area to diagnose and treat those who are the victims of their workplace. It is, says a paper published in BMJ Case Reports, “the first time they have intervened in an area for reasons other than natural disasters or war”.

MSF’s intervention was triggered by “the widespread industrial negligence and apathy of owners of tanneries and other hazardous material factories” towards the more than 600,000 largely migrant population who have no access to government-funded healthcare.

MSF set up and ran four main clinics for 5,000 workers in 2015, located in the centre of communities involved in four different manufacturing processes at factories for tanning, plastics recycling, garment-making and metals.

The hazards of the 250 or so tanneries in Hazaribagh – which are 30 to 35 years old and discharge 6,000 cubic metres of toxic effluent and 10 tonnes of solid waste every day – are best known. In 2012, Human Rights Watch produced a report called “Toxic Tanneries” which revealed the flouting of Bangladesh’s own laws as well as international law in the employment of children under 18 in work that is harmful or hazardous.

The factories douse animal skins in cauldrons of chemicals as part of the processing of “Bengali black” leather, which is exported to European leather goods manufacturers in Italy, Spain and elsewhere.

“Apart from heavy metals like chromium, cadmium, lead and mercury, a conglomerate of chemicals are discharged by the tanneries into the environment,” says the paper. “Workers aged eight and older are soaked to the skin, breathing the fumes for most of the day and eat and live in these surroundings throughout the year. Personal protective equipment [is] not provided.”

Child workers clad in no more than loin cloths and wellington boots are exposed to chemicals including formaldehyde, hydrogen sulphide and sulphuric acid, write Venkiteswaran Muralidhar, associate professor at the Sri Balaji Medical college in Chennai, and colleagues.

Chronic skin and lung diseases are common, say the authors. Within six months of the setting up of the clinics, 3,200 of the 5,000 eligible workers had come forward for at least one consultation. Among them, 468 (14.6%) were diagnosed with suspected work-related diseases, and 30 (0.9%) had work-related injuries.

The figures do not reflect the overall harm to the population, however, said Muralidhar. Those who are severely injured by chemicals or accidents would not go to one of the clinics. “They will probably be taken by rickshaw to a hospital in Dhaka,” he told the Guardian. And the clinics were only open four days a week, during the daytime, and workers needed the owner’s permission to go for a consultation.

He feels strongly that a hospital should be set up in the slum to help its people. “They are the most horrible conditions you can imagine,” he told the Guardian. “I work in this area. I have never seen anything as bad as this.”

Source: The Guardian

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