This is a video, showing a 12-year-old boy screaming in pain. His leg is shaking uncontrollably.
His name is Irfan.
A few hours before this video was recorded, Irfan had been at school, sitting an exam.
And then...
I cannot breathe.
Hours later he, and hundreds of school pupils, ended up in hospital. They inhaled toxic gases
after chemical waste was illegally dumped into a river.
This is what happens when your school is caught up in an environmental crisis.
This is the Kim Kim river in Pasir Gudang. Pasir Gudang is a town in Southern Malaysia.
It’s home to 2000 factories
On the 13th of March I woke up
And prepared myself for school I said goodbye to my mum
It’s just like our normal routine At seven I sent him to school
and that’s the last time I saw him walking properly to the school.
We were finishing our exam paper
But suddenly the teacher wants us to gather
at the side of the canteen
Everyone felt confused
Is it for a fire drill or something?
I also started to smell a really bad smell
It’s like burnt rubber when I inhaled it I cannot breathe again
I heard children screaming
It made me so scared. My head was dizzy
I was about to black out
One week earlier Late at night on the 6th of march 2019, a
lorry filled with up to 40 tonnes of toxic chemical waste allegedly dumped its load into
the Kim Kim river.
Harmful gases began releasing into the air. The next day two schools half a kilometer
from the dump site shut after students fell ill.
This area is called Pasir Putih. It's known as the red zone because it's just metres away
from the river.
Hi my name is Nur Adani
I’m 11 years old
At the time I was at school. I felt hot tears in my eyes.
After that there was a very strong smell.
Nur Adani's mum also smelt it. She thought
it was coming from her kitchen.
But an hour later she got a message telling her there was an emergency at school.
I’m so surprised.
There were a lot of ambulances
A lot of the children collapsed. They were vomiting
and in pain.
I was given oxygen But the oxygen wasn’t
enough and I was already unconscious. So I had to take an ambulance to hospital.
Nur Adani was hospitalised for a week. Later on her two brothers were also affected
by the toxic waste.
Afiq who was 11 months old when it happened, and his 12 year old brother, Aqil - were both
taken to hospital with breathing difficulties.
During this first wave 39 people had to go to hospital.
And two schools were closed and cleaned.
Days later they reopened.
But the river was still full of harmful chemicals.
On the 12th of March, 14-year-old Balqis was eating in the school canteen.
Minutes later, she collapsed.
Before I fainted I felt drowsy
After that, I felt terrified.
Her mum, Atikah drove straight to school when she got a message saying her daughter wasn't well.
My knees were trembling in the car.
Atikah didn’t know where her daughter was.
Eventually she found out. Balqis was in intensive care.
When I awoke from being unconscious there were needles on my hands and neck.
When I held my daughter’s feet it had turned yellow, white, pale and icy to touch.
And I whispered into her ears: ‘You’re strong, my child.’
After that I felt scared. I had one thought in my mind: wonder if my daughter will survive until tomorrow?
Eventually Balqis came round.
Since then she, and hundreds of other students have received psychological help.
By late March 6,000 people were treated for exposure to hazardous fumes.
111 schools were forced to shut for a few weeks.
So what was in the river that might have made people so ill?
I’ve seen a copy of a government toxicology report that shows 9 chemicals were found in
the ambient air near the river.
1. Methane 2. Hydrogen Chloride
3. Acrylonitrile 4. Acrolein
5. Benzene 6. Toluene
7. Xylene 8. Ethylbenzene
9. D-Limonene These chemicals can cause nausea and vomiting;
eye irritation; breathing difficulties and loss of consciousness.
There are no test results from the children that directly prove these chemicals caused
their sickness.
But the Royal society of chemistry in the UK me this:
The nine chemicals measured in the ambient air by the river are all potentially harmful
to human health and the environment.
Unregulated dumping of such materials is hazardous and must be stopped.
One of the most harmful chemicals was Acrolein.
It causes shortness of breath from 0.3 Parts Per Million. PPM is the scale used to measure
the concentration of a substance.
It was found at more than 17 times above the recommended safety limit in the air.
The people in Pasir Gudang exposed to this very dangerous gas
Are very lucky because of the meteorological factor [wind] that blew away all this toxic
gas
If say that day the wind hadn’t blown
And there were those levels of Acrolein in the air what would have been the result?
There would be a few fatalities among the schoolchildren actually. Because their bodies
and immune system is not that mature like adult people.
More than a year on, Irfan is still suffering from the effects of the pollution.
He has been diagnosed with myokymia.
That’s a condition where the muscles in his legs contract, making them twitch and
shake uncontrollably.
Irfan has to use a walking stick.
On the night of the incident I felt my foot suddenly started shaking.
It felt really painful. And it can’t stop.
It even shakes when I am asleep.
Salam alaykum.
Here is the sensitive part.
It’s the part that hurts.
The pain feels like a hammer smashing it.
Irfan’s parents showed me a letter from his doctor which says his condition “could
be related to the exposure of the toxic chemical in the Sungai Kim Kim. But the government
denies there’s a link.’
The ministry of Malaysia has failed to respond to my repeated requests for an interview or
a statement. So who dumped these chemicals?
The Malayasian government has brought a number of charges against two directors of P tech resources
- a factory which burns tyres to make low grade oil.
They and a lorry driver are accused of violating the 1974 Environmental Quality Act.
I contacted the company's lawyer, who told me.
Our client is not prepared to...make any comments’
They plead not guilty
But some people think the issue of toxic waste dumping runs much deeper..
I saw this river bloom. I saw this river dying. I saw this river dead now.
This is one mangrove that haunts me because of its dead silence.
You don’t hear monkeys.
The whole place here you can say is now sterile. Sterilised by chemicals. All gone. Killed
off. A river is technically dead when you have
things like these opening up.
Today it’s gone. Killed off.
Two thirds of Malaysia’s dead rivers are in the region around Pasir Gudang.
You are looking at a god-given treasure that has been so badly abused that today the whole
river is nothing but toxic mud.
The river has to be cleaned up. It has to be fast.
Since the incident the government says it has collected 900 tonnes of soil, 1500 tonnes
of polluted water and at least two tonnes of chemical substances from the river.
The government has a released a package of measures to tackle the issue.
It’s going to increase surveillance of factories and it’s introduced the country’s first
ever ‘Real Time alert system’ which will notify the authorities if any harmful chemicals
are detected in the air.
65 schools have been given gas detectors..
But for some parents, those actions aren’t enough.
Irfan’s family are part of a group of 42 parents who are suing the government
He still cannot walk.
Somebody has to be responsible.
We want the government to give us some assurance that this incident will not happen again.
They must choose either to move the factories, or move the people People start questioning
whether they should leave Pasir Gudang.
I want to see him run in front of my eyes. Playing football, swimming, rock climbing.
When he goes to school he uses crutches.
It’s all because of the bad people who dumped the toxic waste into the river that my child
became like this.
I don’t think it’s fair because we didn’t do anything.
We only just went to school in order to become smart.
After filming this, Irfan got six straight As in his primary school exams.
BUt it’s still unclear what long-term impact the toxic waste pollution will have on his
life.