You cant see it but these children have poison in their blood the director of the Primary School in center they pasco in peru says learning and concentration difficulties are usually the 1st sign to this one is when they sneeze the blood often comes out of their noses. They struggle to Pay Attention for longer stretches of time so. Im sure that students lead in their blood and that. The school is right next to a gigantic open cast mine. The crater dominates the town of set of a possible. The Global Economy is hungry for wrong materials. But this comes at a high cost 1. 00 that many south americans have to pay. Some even with their lives. Saturday pasco is a town in the heart of the peruvian andes and peru and the sight of a huge open cast mine extracting zinc silver and lead for global markets. The mine is now owned by a swiss commodities giant Glencore Glencore recently paid several 100000000. 00 for it but the people who live here pay any even higher price said today pasco lies at an altitude of 4300 meters locals absorb heavy metals into their bloodstream through the tap water. On the side of the leg makes us tying it to that especially if its children. Maintains that my stomach hurts my head aches a visiting a list if you dont like when i ask my children to solve a problem if they could take it tell it to come from shop 1000000000 living. Next door as a Health Center with a poster that reads led campaign. Everyone can get tested for heavy metals there. Doesnt that is his house and we are measuring elevated values for all heavy metals lead cadmium potassium and mercury all residents have levels that clearly exceed the World Health Organizations limits. Skating. Look at the end. Peruvian journalists have documented the worst cases. Children confined to wheelchairs because their lead levels are more times too high. Cars from operation. Dr fernando or sorries has researched heavy metal exposure his study revealed alarming results. And i made up if you think the. Government this is a mean us i found the most heavy metals in children and pregnant women. Will tell us what if anything but we feel if. The children have lead in their blood which means they have problems with Nervous System Development from a young age and reduced i. Q. Is as they get older. And that half is from the littlest several youll. Have also discovered levels of arsenic which is carcinogenic. I mean if you not feel equal i dont know you would be a wealth and actually goes without say the thats not just my opinion the World Health Organization says that to. Us and that. These diseases are directly linked to peruse worthless exploitation of Natural Resources for export. The whole country is in its grip. Were on our way through a barren landscape to the highest town in the world. You can smell the garbage long before you even reach. Hundreds of tons of waste surround the town in a ring several kilometers deep. The locals say the state has little power in this town of 50000 people perched 5100 meters up in the andes. If you are originally from this inhospitable region. They came to this place to find gold. There is more gold here than anywhere else. Entire families are in thrall to gold fever sifting through the waste from the mine to find tiny fragments of gold. None of the mines are official. Everyone jennifer themselves. Nobody has a permit. Not even the gold diggers who have driven their miles long shafts into the mountains. 10 years ago the gold boom attracted thousands of impoverished peruvian sobbing kanada. When fortunato to k. 1st arrived just a few 100 people were living in the town where nighttime temperatures can drop to minus 20 degrees celsius. Someone told me back then that a lot in kanada had a future its hard but ive stayed ive been here almost 24 years now. The Mining Companies have complete power if you dont play by their rules you get fired still fortunato held out soon hell have earned enough to leave lauding kanada for good but working in the shops has left its mark on the 59 year old. You know theres particulate matter everywhere in the mines. Many colleagues die of pneumonia or from gas poisoning caused by one of the underground explosions us. Once a month or 2 not a sells his gold to a trader its usually worth about a 1000 euro so thats a pretty good income for peru. Here in the wild west people can at least scrape a living but elsewhere they are paying for raw material exports with their lives. A burst dam in bruma denio in brazil in early 2019 had fatal consequences. Bali it was the Mining Company responsible for the disaster. Rescue workers dug desperately through the mud and sludge to find survivors among the 300 people reported missing. More often than not they only found bodies. Some had even been buried in a box. How because so something blew simmering he dug with his hands and found the tire of the bus as. It was noon when the dam of the iron ore mine collapsed without warning. An employee recorded this video where he says all workers were sitting at the lunch table. To to the mudslide engulfed hundreds of workers and residents below the reservoir. Brown red possibly toxic mud flooded the valley. The Emergency Services saved one young couple in the nick of time. And this woman also escaped from the ruins i think. It took just one hour to devastate the entire valley. Distraught relatives gathered at an Emergency Response center many received trauma counseling. Most had to learn that their brothers fathers or uncles were still missing so they waited even as hope of finding survivors way. And. In conclusion chin on choosing opposition well stay here until we find out what happened muscle soem engine only wanting to do more interfaced is whats happened is terrible this is negligence this and my small phasing in the shit ice. The morning after the disaster warning sirens sounded again people were scared a 2nd mudslide was imminent and fled to higher ground. We heard the sirens at 530 thats when we came here with our i. D. s since then weve been waiting and still have no information that that means. The police blocked off a bridge and the main road room again at the moment nobody knew exactly what was going on but it was gradually becoming clear that the Mining Company of ali could no longer guarantee bruma deano was safe this is a hardship and that it would be even worse if there were more casualties thats why theyre sealing off the area. The rescuers had to stop their work because of concerns that another dam above could collapse. By. The delay anger the families desperately waiting for news of their loved ones. Every moment was precious. It. Was nothing at all i had no information about my husband its been 2 days now it is you know the 8 hours later they finally received the all clear signal for the 2nd dam the rescue work could continue. Meanwhile the people of burma denio were trying to come to terms with the sheer scale of the disaster. On a ritas 28 year old nephew was in the canteen when the mudslide hit home. He went to work and never came back but im the one who now is lying and. Its incredibly sad to see you my dear. People prayed for the missing at the Church Next Door but 4 days after the disaster sorrow was turning to anger at mine operator of ali. Yes this was no accident it was a crime. No amount of financial compensation will bring our friends back to conspire god and vali is now under investigation by brazils Justice Department which has frozen over 2000000000 euros of the companys assets. And so these are more that i heard you this is a human tragedy because it involves such a large number of victims rindge youve each of us. Ringback environmental activists protesting outside the company headquarters. They say the commodities giant invested too little in safety and oversight. Is one of the worlds biggest iron ore exporters. Many people have accused the company of deliberately flirting with disaster in order to be able to meet the increased Global Demand for iron ore. But he doesnt dont know land the company only has licenses to mine there and if they can even do that without making mistakes contaminating rivers and killing people. In bali is now facing probably the biggest crisis since it was founded 77 years ago. He bought a used to be state owned. The growth of the Global Demand for iron ore led to a rapid expansion in the 1970 s. And even operates its own fleet of ships. Vala grew to be so powerful during the Brazilian Military dictatorship it was privatized in the 1990 s. But the state is still the Majority Shareholder of the 2009 economic crisis hit bali hard the company which is dependent on Global Demand had to layoff many workers. But the past few years have seen a marked turnaround baalei was able to cash in on increased demand for iron ore in china and europe and has become a heavyweight in the brazilian stock index. The company has massively expanded its mining activities and generates billions in profits then in november 2015 a dam belonging to one of alis subsidiaries collapsed 1000 people were killed and volleys operations came under increasing scrutiny. This was a 1000 as a so often the case and brazil regulations and controls may be moving in the right direction but according to the law there should have been 3 times as many inspectors in the disaster area to effectively inspect the reservoirs as there actually were. To stop until you can hardly say the president really takes environmental regulation seriously it is just just what the authorities had said 3 days before the accident was that these years although its laws are right no government neither left nor right has actually implemented. A simple public on. After the bruma denio tragedy the authorities suspected that a brazilian subsidiary of germanys took may have been partly to blame and arrested 2 of its employees. Documents show that the 2 men had certified the dam as safe just a few months earlier and the investigators wanted to know why. But the dam may have burst due to factors that had only come into play after the inspection. In december 20. 8th and see issued the volley group with a permit classifying the dam as a level 4 in other words medium safety risk. But the minutes of an earlier Environmental Commission show that the risk level had previously been a 6 heightened risk. The Environmental Agency also approved an expansion of mining activity this was significant because it also involved work around the dam. Media reports cited this as an express permit it was issued just a few weeks before the accident and for saw a 70 percent increase in production. And environmental activists from the disaster area accuses the mine operator of negligence. Or he of the valley group must have noticed that something in the dam was out of whack because of its illegal activities and then a month before the accident tried to get retrospective approval it doesnt muddy since. Environmental groups are calling for more rigorous state oversight was each of them said i knew best that yet they had all we can see theres less oversight because the environmental authorities have been massively on the cuss is all those body lays magnificus skills missing plumb into most even with the loss of clear the control of thoughts hes do not have the resources to enforce them. Its. Hardly any checks are carried out. Because companies are accessing enormous pressure to prevent them. The means to me to change them up is still in the offing this is going to bring jimmy the vinaigrette has been. They can to nations to politicians for a long time going to be we started coming but i. Thought i did the old anger about this has been rising in bruma denio where they are also aware this wasnt the 1st mining disaster. On a rita the aunt of the 28 year old who died there is a thing about the lack of oversight because they thought of them the company knew that wasnt was a tight me as i should have fixed it was but they only think about it all that its not about us yet you. Meanwhile locals are left facing the Environmental Impact reddish brown tailing slurry thats contaminated the water. Was awful we used to use this river but now there is no river anymore its finished. Locals like the tour who rely on tourism are worried about making ends meet it will take months before the whole area is decontaminated its a disaster with both human and environmental dimensions a lot of questions still havent been answered especially about lax oversight and whether it was tolerated to increase profit margins. Back instead of the possible peru. Experts say a fine layer of toxic particles has settled over these mountains. They come from a nearby metal smelting plant. Chimney of the smelter now releases fewer sulfur dioxide lead and arsenic fumes into the air than it used to. Just a few years ago it was still running at full blast. It never bothered us we never left anyway so we thought everywhere looked like this. I see the consequences of the air pollution still haunt the residents many of whom suffer from chronic diseases blood lead levels are 4 times higher than the w h os upper limits pablo has serious neurological complaints but he still supports your londa and her fight for better Environmental Standards you. At 1st they called. But that never bothered me because people like you londa also supported. The Catholic Church and International Organizations helped us to get the peruvian state to finally recognize the poisoning that affects us as well as our diseases. And. Thats why operations in the smelter have been scaled back although the complex hasnt been shut down completely and continues to contaminate the area with heavy metals yolanda says the smelters legacy will be felt for years to come shes meeting Constantine Bittner who works for the german n. G. O. S eddy or he spent 2 years tracking the way German Companies continue to import Raw Materials from peru in spite of environmental problems. When it comes to Raw Materials germany is very dependent on peru much on imports a lot of Raw Materials especially copper lead silver or gold malev dinner. And it would have a huge problem if the peruvian supply chain were to break down. Concerted efforts to expose the human rights. Pieces. Of pollution caused by the supply chain a rare. Mention of ice to the basin. So almost there are more efforts to push things in the other direction. People writing that things are pretty good just highlighting a couple of sustainable projects like that but when you visit places like this things look a bit different than the stuff in the cinemas almost from. The future of the smelter is a sensitive issue in la jolla one that even divides families. Some want more operations to create jobs others take a different view. Which desk embody we need to find a balance when this field goes the smelting complex needs better filters to reduce contamination that means continuous urine i dont see that in just one liter well yes i know they do but my main concern is the health of my children i even argue with my husband about this community i do both work in the mining industry. I expect the mine operators to act more responsibly. One person in la jolla whos been on the side of the victim since the very beginning is Cardinal Pedro barito who also comes from a mining region. For years he has witnessed the many deaths caused by the ruthless exploitation of mineral resources. And a listener must think. Like this thank god that is she in the church is not against. This but we are against to responsible money and hes 6 of us for the peruvian state allows Foreign Companies to basically earn their weight in gold here while at the same time causing such regrettable consequences for the peruvian people and the environment. But living at altitudes as high as perils and days already poses health risks especially for the dreamers and schemers enlarging kanada. A team of french scientists in 2019 set out to find out how the backbreaking labor here at 5100 meters altitude is affecting the miners bodies. They took blood samples from the gold miners to measure the number of red blood cells the blood cells that transport oxygen. But there is less oxygen in the thin air up here than at sea level. The scientists wanted to find out how people had adapted to these extreme conditions. Which is normal as in that in. About 40 percent here we measured a lot of people above 80 percent which is a huge amount of red blood cells in the blood and this helps them to bring much more oxygen to the organs for instance to the to the brain to the missiles the results indicated the miners bodies had adapted to the altitude their blood was then or the normal and stress tests revealed their hearts were working at a maximum capacity. The study was also intended to help People Living at sea level. So learning how these people here. Can manage to leave weve so few oxygen its a way to think how to manage people patients having respiratory disease and also suffering from my pox yeah. Im only able to deal with such low levels of oxygen with the help of coca leaves. The leaves soul is about one euro 20 without them i wouldnt be able to do anything at 5100 metres you can either prepare them as tea or even better chew them. Gold digger fortunato shows me how to do it even after all these years he still feels the need to chew coca leaves as do most of the miners here. Seems like a ghost town to me but eric ramos chooses to spend his university became here laboring to extract the coveted precious metal from the ground. For this he and his relatives begin by washing the earth and rocks. Further downstream the gold falls through the gratings and gets caught in mats. With temperatures only around 5 degrees celsius its hard work even for a fit 21 year old like eric. Its pretty tough out here in the cold. But i think im lucky because were finding a lot of coal and we can buy furniture and stuff. Mercury plays a key role in the process its used to separate the gold from the rock but that requires repeated rinsing in the Cold Mountain air. Some of the slams does it when the limberlost so were mixing it here like this by adding mercury to the slurry of rock and gold. In the end i get a mixture of gold and mercury. Thats how we get the gold out of the rock. Was a famous name of the movie in the theater and the prospectors then pour the mix into metal pans and sift out the little clumps of gold unlike his father eric doesnt intend to work like this forever. If im studying on the side and when i finish i dont want to come back here im going to when ive got them you get what your dream is to you know to do and i want to be a teacher. Almost everyone here once had dreams but most of them have been shattered. Many gold diggers get stuck in lot in kanada somewhere between bars and brothels. Under the spell of gold. And. Before we leave we see women in the town searching for gold specks and puddles of ice run off and urine. Not ink on the that still doesnt have Running Water or a sewage system. But there is a cemetery. A gold prospectors last resting place. The cold the poisons in the garbage each takes its toll on people in the worlds highest town. We travel a bit further into the peruvian amazon. We come upon the unwatered of the 3rd aging cargo ship loaded with pig. Loading the ship is hard work but load wake is still glad to have a job as a porter at least until he starts to work out how much hes been carrying. When going out on his bed is that a sack of rice weighs 50 kilos so thats 100. 00 kilos for 2 sacks. Yeah and every day we unload a truck full which adds up to several times. Ludwig and his colleagues spend about 3 hours loading and unloading the ship then they have to take a break. But their jobs may soon be obsolete anyway. The peruvian government is planning to build a modern and fully automated trans shipment terminal in the port town of u. T. Mogwai us. There are a few roads in the proven amazon so nearly everything has to be transported along the river. Boxes sacks parcels and livestock. Boats as small as the of the water the 3rd are logistical nightmare it takes hours before everything is stowed on board. The ship the harbor master is already looking forward to a new Container Terminal it promises to make things simpler faster and better. Well soon see some progress here peruvian brazilian and all the other boats will soon be able to pass through all year round and carry more cargo do you think thats. The harbormaster is hoping for a dramatic increase in exports of brawl materials to china. You know he is the kid theyre all via a sprawling Infrastructure Project involving the dredging of 3 major tributaries of the amazon aims to create 3000 kilometers of deep draft channels along the river wide enough for larger ships. To. Up. Chinese consortium has been set up to manage the project which is due to start soon. And were building an extensive system of waterways that will open up new opportunities right now when the water level is low ships can only operate during the day not at night this project will greatly improve transportation links. But thats still all in the future for the time being traders and passengers remain dependent on boats like the eduardo the 3rd. It will take 3 days and 3 nights to make it to you keep those assuming nothing goes wrong. Sign perez is the ships captain hes been sailing the amazon for 25 years. For him its not just a job but a calling to. The world cup i mean another navigating your way along these rivers is a real art. I inherited the talent from my father. The only cool im the only one of his sons to have carried on the tradition and i hope that the generation after me will continue it to. Be a little bit of them you have to. Say you it means a lot to me that youre good but i. Think. These days the captain doesnt spend much time at the helm. And he now has other people to do that task for him. Like. Whos also been on the job for decades. Sailing in such shallow waters takes a great deal of experience. And. I was in to. Be familiar with the river. And people look out for shifting sand banks and i think theyre really dangerous but yeah if you run into one honey thing can happen the ship can even capsize with. Smaller boats are used to move along the tributaries to the villages where many inhabitants opposed the hydro via project. Relations between locals and the Central Government are strained many local people are part of the Indigenous Community or have Indigenous Roots they have suffered a long history of persecution and injustice and are still discriminated against they any of that because a member of the ku comma people is one of the last to can still speak the common language even the kind who come my neck to feed the. Market the market clean now. If they put it well that means how long and where are you from they need them. Today they are neither has a visitor said that bin she is an activist who is committed to preserving cool calm a culture she fears that the new Infrastructure Projects will do lasting damage. I feel almost ignored here as a kid in the new technology and the machines theyll bring in will have a devastating impact mark yes it will destroy a lot of things when i see that some of this because. Im really. Cool a river means life for us and for the animals Little Things i mean mine. Is that what he looked at me the most receiver thing thing im a b. B. I mean its as important as having a supreme being in light of. The rivers and lakes of the amazon are central to the calmest culture they believe theres another world under the water where their ancestors gather and where people spirits and animals all live together. For the comma any harm to the rivers and lakes would threaten the balance of the spiritual realm. The human being whose. Home but the protests against the new water highway also have a very practical dimension. Still that runs a painting school. She says you only have to look at the course of the river to see that dredging and channeling are a bad idea. Because it is going to see the river here is constantly changing older people here will tell you that 2 streams appear and disappear give us on the theme we are not meant to interfere he. Asked. Us if this point is one leading scientists are raising as well. Many of them have reservations about the project one is Jorge Abbas Veyron mental engineer who has spent 2 years researching the amazon. He says the network of waterways here has shifted constantly for millions of years. We cant let you know if they even think theres more to their lives you would. Want to try to put more faith in that more theyre. Finding out what may not make them or their family never get done. And if they think you. Know we dont know enough thats why hes begun evaluating samples satellite images and other measurements at a survey like this takes time and he says the government doesnt want to wait at the same time the governments own surveys are inadequate are the commercial interests involved simply too powerful. Basically i mean what i believe that the last. Time thanks i think they want to be. You know we want to be nice to say yes that may be showing that maybe you dont need to pay for them maybe not try to keep it but you know i think me i dont buy that. Dredging the river at the wrong place could have disastrous consequences he says it could upset the ecological balance and in danger of local biodiversity. Even if existing waterways are expanded and no new roads are built it still carries high risks. This group of young filmmakers are shooting a documentary on current environmental problems traveling through the Amazon Region to talk to local people and get evidence of environmental pollution on film. Boil extraction is a major polluter many of the pipelines leak pager wants his video footage to show that Pipeline Maintenance and cleanup operations arent working anywhere near as well as the government claims. It was a year in the middle of my country in the middle of peru the reality is theres nothing other than pollution and then. Theres no Drinking Water and that makes me afraid you can die if you drink the water here you. Get because you know. Pedro accuses the government of putting profit before people in the region and he doesnt believe the amazon Infrastructure Project will change anything. Seem to have a difference yeah. Sure they tell us how things will improve the government says the big ships from other countries coming up here will buy our products. But thats not how things will be. Nobody is going to stop here to buy our fish its all dissin from ation. The government rejects these accusations saying that the he drove will also benefit local communities and then administered the benefit of you saying that the Indigenous People will benefit enormously it will help them get around quicker to the dr for example the new infrastructure will make a lot of things easier. On this one this but we will have a lot of work to do explaining the project to the people in this thank god weve been in for you. So it seems the government still has some convincing to do if it wants to push through its controversial plans to increase exports of Raw Materials. All this isnt relevant to the eduardo of the thirds operators right now. They just want to move their cargo as fast as possible get it unloaded and continue on their way. But sign perez still hopes to captain bigger and more modern ships up and down the river one day. He and his crew once again master the tricky currents that are welcomed with music. To. The porters quickly begin to unload the much needed cargo. In a few days they will leave again with a fresh load of people cargo and stories on his next journey along the lifeline the peruvian amazon. Got to go into. And the moment before we arrive safely at the moment what i mean the ship are securely mord and what about your. Nothing brownout about. Me thats the most important thing for me and i think what im. Back in saturday pasco missouri or staffer Constantine Bittner meets a local activist. Louise sealed up on say publicizes the Health Problems caused by elevated lead levels in childrens blood. He has been criticizing the lack of protective measures for years. And most of the c. B. C. I was going to see too few dollars to says we have been identifying excessively high blood levels for years now weve even had help from international institutions. And maybe thats what the ministry of health still hasnt done anything to alleviate chronic heavy metal poisoning on children. But is it only b. S. If you mr things. May shows us a film of children describing their headaches and nosebleeds. Both symptoms are linked to the constant toxicity instead of the pasco. But to date the activists have seen little response to their protest. And in those days when you see the music when you put it is that in 2017 we protested in front of the ministry of health for 10 days following that they signed declarations of intent. But the treatment of the hundreds of thousands of children who have to live with heavy metal toxicity is only progressing slowly and its still inadequate. For now children still have to live with it and as you can see the environmental problems in south they pasco havent been eliminated either. Glencore released a written statement saying the company was doing everything within its power to keep the human impact to a minimum and that it will take further protective measures. For many children however these could come too late for the same people would be does this this year that we feel forgotten the United States 32 other cities weve given a lot to peru and our government. But weve got nothing back. Were much worse off than other places is that they always do what the sudan. But said of the pasco is just one of many places in south america caught in the stranglehold of the global greed for Raw Materials places where bulldozers rip open the earth and poisons eat their way through peoples bodies. A. Lot of. Deep learning marched reality wait a 2nd we want the whole picture out facts instead of make ideas shift deliver us. From one measure to reality to cryptocurrency your top picks for live in an ever changing Digital World lets start the digitalisation shift. In 30 minutes on your debut. They were forced into a nameless mass. Their bodies mere jewels was. The history of the slave trade is africas history. Books for power in traffic plummeted an entire continent into chaos and violence. This is the journey back into the history of slavery. I think we will truly be making progress when we all accept the history of slavery as all of our history. Our documentary series slavery routes starts march 9th on t w. This is deja vu news live from berlin india rolls out the red carpet for the u. S. President for the runs are modi and donald trump this high profile visit is an opportunity to build on their u. S. Meeting last year but will everyone be welcoming the american leader with open arms also coming up the party is over italy pulls the plug on the carnival festivities in venice after a 3rd person dies of the coronavirus south korea and iran are also trying to contain