Canadian copper company leaves a legacy of toxic waste

SAMUEL SCHLAEFLI

Sickness has been common for years in Tsumeb, where Dundee Precious Metals (DPM) was the biggest employer for more than a decade. Tests have now found the soil is contaminated with arsenic and other heavy metals

In the citrus orchards above the Namibian town, workers often fall sick. They say they feel a burning sensation in their eyes and throats and a metallic taste in their mouths as the wind blows across from the copper smelter a few kilometres away.

“When the gas is coming from that side, we get headaches and dizziness, and sometimes you feel like you want to throw up,” says Festus Gawab, who has worked for three years on a citrus farm near Tsumeb, watering the orange and lemon trees.

His two children, aged 4 and 6, have visible sores on their bodies.

His co-worker, Johnny Ngongo, has a range of similar symptoms.

“It feels like fire in my lungs,” Ngongo says.

Sickness has been common for years among the people of Tsumeb, an industrial town of about 35,000 people , where Toronto-based Dundee Precious Metals Inc. ran the copper smelter – the town’s biggest employer – for more than a decade, until August, 2024.

Many residents blame their health problems on the smelter’s emissions and its vast stockpile of arsenic-laced waste.

New laboratory tests, analyzed at a Swiss university as part of an investigation by The Globe and other media in Europe and Namibia, have found alarming levels of arsenic in samples from the town’s soil and plants – and in its inhabitants.

Each of the 12 samples from Tsumeb showed arsenic levels of more than one milligram per kilogram – the exposure limit that some previous studies have recommended.

In eight of the samples, the arsenic level was at least three times above this level.

One employee’s arsenic level was 20 times higher.

Compared to hair samples of people in Namibia and Switzerland who are not exposed to arsenic, the levels in Tsumeb were up to 100 times higher.

The tests also found that the soil near the smelter was heavily contaminated with arsenic and other heavy metals such as lead and copper.

Many of the former employees, plagued by illnesses, have formed a group to seek medical care and financial compensation from DPM.

“The problems in the smelter only started with DPM and the copper from Bulgaria,” said Nikasius Hangula, a 70-year-old former smelter worker who retired in 2014.

He and his co-workers in the smelter furnace, he said, began noticing an unbearable itching on their skin, and rashes that turned into blisters and left open wounds.

“The smoke got you in the nose,” he said.

“It felt like burning. I became weaker and weaker.”

When workers complained, the company told them they weren’t wearing their protective clothing properly, or they needed a new respirator, but nothing made any difference, Hangula said.

“They said we were complaining too much. I was afraid of being fired. Some of those who complained were fired.”

Today he suffers from stomach pains, kidney damage, fatigue and frequent coughing, and his arm shakes uncontrollably.

He can’t afford the battery of tests that he would need to determine the cause. Instead he goes to a state hospital, where he is given some pills and sent away.

“These values, with up to 2 per cent arsenic in the soil, are extremely high and comparable to other soils contaminated by smelting,” Prof. Mestrot said.

The company says it has planted 15,000 tamarisk shrubs around the smelting works to absorb heavy metals from the soil and store them in the wood.

When the shrubs are big enough, they are burned in the smelter’s furnace.

In August, DPM completed the sale of its Tsumeb smelter to a Chinese company, Sinomine Resource Group, for US$ 20 million.

But it leaves behind a legacy of toxic waste, including a growing accumulation of arsenic trioxide whose exact size is undisclosed.

In its 2023 annual report, DPM reported net earnings of about US$ 180 million from its operations in Namibia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Ecuador. On its website, it touts itself as “an environmentally and socially responsible gold mining company.”

It denies the allegations in Tsumeb, saying it invested hundreds of millions of dollars to upgrade the smelter to national and international environmental standards after acquiring it as an “ageingaging and out-of-date” facility in 2010.

This included US $85 million to reduce arsenic contamination during its operations, it says.

“We paid particular attention to the health of our workers and the community,” DPM spokesperson Jennifer Cameron said.

“We modernized safety equipment, introduced new safety protocols, improved workplace health and wellness programs and made investments in community health facilities.”

She said the company co-operated with a study in 2011 that found “a high incidence of skin rashes possibly associated with arsenic exposure.”

As a result, the company “voluntarily moved to increase industrial hygiene and health testing and established protocols to move workers out of high exposure areas if necessary,” she said. Average arsenic exposure in the smelter has declined by 72 per cent since 2012,the company says.

But samples analyzed recently by Swiss researchers found that the soil around the smelter was heavily contaminated with arsenic and other heavy metals.

The tests also found elevated levels of arsenic in leaves and grass in the area, and in hair samples of employees and residents who live near the smelter.

“The values are alarming and show that the population of Tsumeb is massively exposed to arsenic,” said Adrien Mestrot, professor of soil sciences at the University of Bern in Switzerland.

“Further tests should definitely be carried out to understand the true extent of the health impacts of the smelter,” he said after analyzing dozens of samples from the area around the smelter.

Despite repeated inquiries, neither DPM nor Sinomine was willing to disclose how much arsenic trioxide the Canadian company has left behind in Tsumeb after a decade of processing copper from its Bulgarian mine.

Former managers say it could amount to about 300,000 tonnes – one of the world’s largest accumulations of arsenic waste.

Cameron, in response to questions from The Globe, said the arsenic waste is securely bagged to prevent any air contamination, and the site is regularly inspected and independently audited.

“DPM designed and constructed the facility in line with Namibian and international standards, which included the installation of impermeable liners to prevent groundwater contamination,” she said.

In northern Canada, faced with a similar stockpile of arsenic trioxide at the now-defunct Giant Mine in Yellowknife, the federal government is going much further than this.

The mine’s 237,000 tonnes of arsenic waste are being stored in sealed concrete chambers, 76 metres below ground, and the ground around the chambers will be permanently frozen to prevent the waste from leaching into groundwater. The massive clean-up project will cost an estimated $4.38-billion.

Cameron declined to answer questions about any plans for the arsenic waste stockpile in Tsumeb, saying that the smelter’s new owners should answer.

She also declined to answer questions about DPM’s internal testing of arsenic levels in employees from 2010 to 2024, how many employees had unsafe levels, and how the company handled those cases.

A spokesperson for the smelter, Alina Garises, also declined to answer any questions. She said that DPM’s responses were “sufficient.”

Sinomine, which operates in more than 40 countries worldwide, says it plans to expand the smelter’s output and revamp it to add germanium and zinc to its production lines. – The Globe and Mail

With a report from Ester Mbathera in Tsumeb. Samuel Schlaefli is an independent journalist whose travel costs were funded by the Swiss-based Koalition für Konzernverantwortung, a human rightshuman-rights and environmental coalition, which also funded the arsenic tests at the University of Bern. It did not direct, review or approve the article.

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