Dust littered with poison spreads across the ground because of primitive mining methods. All around, Nigerian children continue to be stricken with illness, most not understanding it's because of the mining. Peebles of gold layered in the earth spark the gold rush. Miners are blinded by dollar signs while children are blinded from the lead seeping into their body.

Sounds and images tell a story plain words fail to convey. Across the ocean, one of the worst lead poisoning cases continues to grow, killing people as it goes, according to Doctors Without Borders. Gold at the price of safety and little children breaks my heart.

Increased mining because of spikes in the price of gold has frenzied the widespread mining in Nigeria. Besides subsistence farming, crawling down in the rickety mines offers the only source of income for most. Oil money doesn't trickle down to the average Nigerian. Men risk their life for $20 to $30 a day, and the children break a sweat for just $2.

Nonprofit groups in the area have tried to educate people, but more than 450 children have already died and many others will face lifelong consequences. Doctors try to help, but children are ingesting lead faster than it can be removed from their bodies. Doctors Without Borders has led the fight to help these people.

Now that the issue has been highlighted for the Nigerian government, plans are in place, but need carried out, that would help people in the mining area. Providing safer mining and population relocation fall under the Action Plan.

But as of July, no action has taken place, even when nearly 79 children died in a span of three weeks in Dareta.

Maybe because of some national press in the United States from NPR and other sources, people will be spurred to help create change in the poisoned countryside. Until then, lead-laced dust will continue to billow out of mines and into the lives of Nigerian people.