Bangladeshi Junayed Akter is one of 35 million children -- around 60 percent of all children in the South Asian nation -- with dangerously high levels of lead, leaving him with the diminutive stature of someone several years younger.
The causes are varied, but his mother blames his condition on a now-shuttered factory that hastily scrapped and recycled old car batteries for profit, poisoning the air and soil of their small village in the process.
As informal battery recycling thrives in Bangladesh, millions of people remain unaware of the risks of lead exposure.