"Children in northwestern Nigeria are no longer dying by the hundreds.

That's the promising word from Mary Jean Brown, chief of the lead poisoning at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

She is a co-author of a of the lead poisoning in Nigeria. From November 2009 to May 2010, some 400 children died in the northwestern state of Zamfara. They were poisoned by lead dust released during the processing of gold ore. Doctors Without Borders called it the worst case of environmental lead poisoning in years."

Marc Silver reports for NPR April 21, 2014. [2]