Children slowly poisoned by picking tobacco in Malawi

Child workers in Malawi¡¦s tobacco fields are slowly being poisoned by the amount of nicotine equal to smoking 50 cigarettes a day, a study has found.Many of the children forced into labour picking tobacco as multinational companies increasingly shift their tobacco production to Africa, are as young as five years old.The children told researchers how they had trouble breathing, suffer headaches and chest pains, and even cough blood as a result of toiling for up to 12 hours a day.

Every day, these child workers absorbed as much as 54 milligrams of dissolved nicotine, through their skin from the tobacco leaves they handle, said children's organisation, Plan, in a report out today.The south east African country is one of the biggest tobacco producers in the world. Almost every cigarette smoked in the west contains Malawian tobacco as part of the blend. The low-grade, high-nicotine tobacco is often used as a filler by manufacturers, reflecting a long-term global shift in production.At least 78,000 children are working on tobacco farms in Malawi, but the true number is probably much higher, the study says. Malawi has the highest level of child labour in southern Africa, and virtually all of the children work in agriculture. Tobacco is Malawi¡¦s main export product and the country depends on it for 70 per cent of its export income.

Researchers who carried out in-depth interviews with 44 child labourers in Malawi found that the children do not wear any protective equipment to shield them from tobacco juice and pesticides."They described picking tobacco with bare hands, carrying large bundles of picked leaves, sorting, sewing and carrying the large bales. They also describe how during the picking season their hands are sticky with juice from the tobacco. They do not have access to water and soap, so this residue stayed on their hands even when they eat."

Many of the children appeared to have the symptoms of green tobacco sickness, a common hazard of working on tobacco farms, the study found. The symptoms can include nausea, vomiting, weakness, headaches, abdominal pain and difficulty in breathing „o all of which were reported in varying degrees by the children."It starts as a little cough but it goes on for a long time," one child told the researchers. "Sometimes it feels like you don't have enough breath, you don't have enough oxygen. You reach a point where you cannot breathe in because of the pain in your chest. Then the blood comes when you vomit." Children are particularly vulnerable to green tobacco sickness because of their small body size and experts believe exposure early on in life can alter the brain function mechanisms in children.

The organisation that did the research wants Malawi's government to properly enforce its existing child labour and protection laws and to provide safer, fairer working conditions for those children forced to work on plantations. It demanded that multinational tobacco companies scrutinise their suppliers far more closely and follow their own corporate responsibility guidelines.

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children