Kabwe, Zambia

Kabwe is a town in the Copperbelt province of Zambia and has approximately 210,000 residents. Kabwe is most commonly known for human fossils found in a cave just outside the city. However, Kabwe is sadly one of the 10 most polluted places on Earth, with severe amounts of lead, cadmium, and zinc pollution resulting from decades of unregulated industrial mining and smelting operations. It is estimated that altogether almost 250,000 people living in the area of and around Kabwe are suffering from varying degrees of lead poisoning. Kabwe, hence, is considered to be a paradigmatic example of the health hazards that uncontrolled industrial mining and smelting activities can pose to humans and to the environment.

In 1902, when Zambia was still under British colonial rule, rich deposits of metal were discovered in a hill outside the village of Kabwe, which immediately led to the beginning of mining activities and the development of a town (named Broken Hill from 1912 until 1967). Mining operations (and later also smelting) were initially controlled by the Rhodesian Broken Hill Development Company and were later taken over by Zambia Consolidated Copper Mines. Until the mid-1930s, Kabwe was the biggest and richest lead mine in the world. Industrial mining continued until 1994, when the Zambian government decided to close the mine.

Under British colonial rule, as well as under Zambian rule, mining and smelting operations in Kabwe went practically unregulated. Over 90 years of heavy mining and smelting activity without proper concern for the human and natural environment, thus, have led in Kabwe to severe pollution by toxic metal dust precipitation across a radius of at least 20 kilometers. Local levels of lead, zinc, copper, and cadmium particles in soils, vegetation, and water are significantly higher than normal.