BLANTYRE, Malawi — Children picking tobacco in the fields of Malawi for consumers far beyond the African country's borders are being poisoned as they absorb up to two cigarette packs' worth of nicotine each day, a children's-rights organization said Monday,
The "extremely high levels of nicotine poisoning" produces not only nausea, headaches, dizziness, difficulty in breathing and other symptoms but "long-lasting changes in brain structure and function," London based Plan International said in a report.
It noted that large-tobacco production has shifted from the United States to developing countries like Malawi, where "children are being exposed to exploitative and hazardous working conditions."
More than 78,000 children,some as young as 5, work on tobacco estates across the southern African country, some up to 12 hours a day for less than 1.7 cents an hour and without protective clothing, the report asserted.
Entitled "Hard work, long hours and little pay," the report said workers absorb up to 54 milligrams a day of dissolved nicotine through their skin. The report initially said that is equivalent to 32 cigarettes, but Plan International revised it to 50.
"Sometimes it feels like you don't have enough breath, you don't have enough oxygen," an unnamed child tobacco worker in Kasungu, in central Malawi, told investigators. "You reach a point where you cannot breathe because of the pain in your chest. Then the blood comes when you [throw up]. At the end ... you remain with a headache."
The symptoms resemble "green tobacco sickness," said MacDonald Mumba, a Plan International official in Malawi. The malady comes from absorbing nicotine from the skin, particularly from wet tobacco.
Some symptoms among the child laborers may have been caused by exposure to pesticides. Children interviewed for the report described sprinkling pesticide onto plants using cups and their bare hands.
The world's giant tobacco companies said they reject use of child labor, but the reality is that Malawians are so poor that many families send their children to work in the fields.
Philip Morris International, one of the largest tobacco companies in the world, said it purchases tobacco from suppliers in Malawi but does not own farms there and "storngly opposes" child labor.
Information for this article was contributed from Johannesburg by Anita Powell of The Associated Press.
Front Section, Pages 2 on 08/25/2009