How a lead mine in Zambia has blighted a town

AZAEL TEMBONGO takes a seat in the shade of a mango tree outside his house. He kicks up the dust. “It’s affected,” he says, pointing to the plume around his feet. The 67-year-old lives in Kabwe, a town in central Zambia whose history, like that of much of the southern African country, is intertwined with mining. Kabwe sprung up around a mine founded in 1904 by the Rhodesian Broken Hill Development Company, a British colonial firm. For decades miners like Mr Tembo crushed and burnt ore to extract lead. That metal made Kabwe but it also devastated it. To this day lead particles blow across town, making their way into houses and bloodstreams.Scientists generally consider soil hazardous if it has more than 400mg of lead per kilogram. In three townships near the old mine the soil contains six, eight and 15 times that amount, according to analysis in 2014 by Pure Earth, an environmental . “Kabwe is the most toxic place I’ve ever been to,” says Richard Fuller, its president.