A pathologist and researcher at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology, Prof. Dr. Paul Osei Sampene, has raised concerns about the severe effects of illegal mining (galamsey) on child development.
He warned that galamsey activities could lead to birth deformities by harming the reproductive health of both mothers and fathers.
Speaking on Channel One TV’s “Point of View,” Prof. Sampene highlighted how harmful heavy metals released during galamsey operations can contaminate food, water, and air.
These toxins, once inside the body, can accumulate and damage the mother’s ovaries or the father’s semen, potentially leading to complications in foetal development.
“We are looking at water, we are looking at the air we breathe and the food that we eat. So all these three means by which the pollutants find themselves can either, thus by eating or inhale by breathing it or sometimes by drinking it from our water bodies. These are the vehicles in which the heavy metals can find themselves in the body.”
“So, if unfortunately, a mother or probably a father has this bioaccumulation of these heavy metals, it can affect the semen and sometimes the ovaries of the mother and then if that thing does not happen, as to whether it affects the mother and that of the father to give birth or cause formation of a foetus, then if the mother for some reasons inhale or eat contaminated food or water or inhale some of these things, it will then find their way into the placenta which will eventually go into the baby and form many deformities.”