Zambia government’s neglect exposing more children to lead poison, HRW says

The failure of Zambia’s government to intervene against “blatant violations” of environmental laws is worsening the exposure of a high number of children to severe health risks, mostly lead poisoning, at a shuttered mining site in the country’s central region, warns a new report.

The Human Rights Watch report published on Wednesday said Zambia is allowing South African, Chinese and domestic mining companies to continue to operate in the lead-contaminated town of Kabwe, where residents are already reeling from decades of toxic lead exposure.

Kabwe, about 150km (95 miles) north of capital Lusaka, is one of the world’s most polluted places after decades of lead and zinc mining.

“Companies are profiting in Kabwe from mining, removing, and processing lead waste at the expense of children’s health,” HRW’s children’s rights director Juliane Kippenberg said, adding that more than 95 percent of children in the area had elevated blood lead levels.

Kabwe’s mine was shut in 1994, yet the government is still “facilitating hazardous mining and processing” in the area by a subsidiary of the multinational mining company Anglo American, HRW said in its 67-page report, leaving an estimated 6.4 million tonnes of uncovered lead waste in dumps.

Nearly 200,000 people, many of them women and children, have been exposed to the contamination, the rights group said, urging the government to revoke the permits of mining companies and clean up the pollution hazard.

The government of Zambia has yet to respond to the report.

Highly sought for industry, lead is nevertheless a particularly toxic metal that can cause severe health problems including brain damage and death, particularly in children, according to the World Health Organization.

More than 95 percent of children living near the Kabwe mine had elevated blood lead levels with about half requiring urgent treatment, the HRW report said.

The concentration of lead in the soil had reached 60,000mg per kg (0.95oz per lb), according to the report, 300 times the threshold considered a hazard by the United States Environmental Protection Agency.

In 2022, a UN expert listed Kabwe as being among so-called “sacrifice zones” where pollution and resultant health issues were the norm for nearby communities.