Journalist Wins Prize for Work on La Oroya

Posted: 27 November 2006

Argentine journalist recognized for story of a six-year-old girl in Peru who has stopped growing due to lead poisoning.

The Argentine journalist Marina Walker Guevara has just received a Reuters Foundation/World Conservation Union (IUCN) regional prize for her article “Los Niños de Plomo” (“The Children of Lead”), published in the journal Gatopardo, in which she reports on health crisis facing thousands of children in La Oroya.

Walker tells the story of Mishell Barzola, a six-year-old girl from La Oroya who has stopped growing due to lead poisoning. At the same time she reports on the actions of the company, Doe Run Peru, whose factory smokestacks emit 800 tons of sulfur dioxide per day, five times the legal limit under Peruvian law.

The Reuters Foundation/IUCN prize is worldwide competition for environmental journalists designed to “recognize excellence in professional reporting on environmental and sustainable development issues; and foster a dialogue between journalists and experts to encourage informative reporting based on sound scientific data."

Recent investigations have shown that the city of La Oroya is one of the most contaminated sites in Latin America because of its high concentrations of lead and other heavy metals, which affect the health and quality of life of local communities.

Oxfam America supports the city’s struggle through the Movement for the Health of La Oroya (MOSAO) and the La Oroya Technical Roundtable, institutions which are calling on the Peruvian government and the company to respect both mining and environmental law. They are also pushing mining companies to raise their standards for toxic emissions to international levels.

Marina Walker’s report took another prize as well: the Lorenzo Natalí Prize for Journalism from the European Commission. These forms of recognition underscore the critical nature of pollution in La Oroya, and the need for local, regional, and above all national authorities to address the public health crisis there.