Medecins Sans Frontieres (MSF) in March 2010 discovered an epidemic of Lead poisoning in Zamfara state, Northern Nigeria. The source was traced to environmental exposure to Lead from the processing of Lead-rich ore mined by artisans in the state for Gold extraction which necessitated an immediate remediation of the affected villages. Dareta village was remediated between June and July 2010. The remediation was a simple process of taking off five centimeters of the contaminated top soil and replacing it with clean soil having confirmed from previous investigations that the contamination was superficial, followed by burial of the contaminated surface soil in land fill which may have far reaching consequences on the ground water quality. Water sample collected from randomly sampled hand dug wells in Dareta at the onset of the remediation exercise were analyzed for selected physicochemical parameters and metal concentrations using standard analytical techniques. Mean level of the parameters examined were Temperature (29.08±0.22oC), pH (6.34±0.26), Electrical Conductivity (370.83±179.16), Total Dissolved Solids (174.33±100.02), Nickel (0.06±0.05m), Chromium (0.17±0.07), Manganese (o.14±0.10), and Magnesium (2.48±0.27). The implications of the findings to public health are also discussed.
