LIMA - Children with lead poisoning in the central Peruvian city of La Oroya will have to spend at least eight hours a day at a special treatment center slated to be set up just outside town next month. Meanwhile, the transnational mining company Doe Run will have to implement programs to stop the damages its operations are causing.

The company pledged to reduce contamination from lead, sulfuric acid, cadmium and arsenic by 2007 to internationally accepted levels. These chemicals are byproducts of Doe Run's operations.

"The program will be controlled by the Health Ministry,'' doctor Jesús Díaz Matos, head of the children's medical unit, told Tierramérica.

The World Health Organization accepts up to 10 micrograms of lead per deciliter of blood. In tests of 728 children under age six in La Oroya in 2004, 82 percent had 20 to 44.9 micrograms per deciliter, and 11 percent had even higher levels.

HAVANA - A newborn seal at the Cuban National Aquarium is thriving, kept isolated from human contact. Only its mother cares for and feeds the pup.

"We are applying an approach of maternal management. It has not been touched by specialists. And we have only one person who provides close care for the mother," Maida Montalio, director of this scientific and recreation institution, told Tierramérica.

The pup, whose birth inaugurated a new maternity area at the aquarium, located on the northern coast of the Cuban capital, was born the night of Jun. 16 in the middle of a storm and has yet to be named.

"Everything seems to indicate it's a female, but we haven't been able to verify the sex. At only five days old it was already swimming and diving," said Montalvo.

GUATEMALA CITY - Guadua (Angustifolia kunth), a species of bamboo known as "vegetable steel," is becoming an alternative material for building low-cost houses in Guatemala, where 280,000 of these plants are growing on 636 hectares.

The guadua also plays an important environmental, economic and cultural role, Colombian Luis Guillermo Naranjo, president of the organization Biotechnology for Improving the Environment, told Tierramérica.

Guatemala has the world's largest guadua nursery, located in Masagua municipality, 75 km south of the capital, with the capacity to cultivate 500,000 plants per year.

"It's an excellent material for earthquake resistant structures, furniture, crafts and laminates," its shoots serve as food, the plant protects soil from erosion and regulates the flow of water sources, helping retain water when it rains and releasing it during the dry season, Naranjo said.