A copper smelter in Tsumeb, Namibia, which was previously owned by Toronto-based Dundee Precious Metals Inc.The Globe and Mail
United Nations experts have asked a Toronto-based mining company to respond to allegations that it damaged the health of workers and community members during its 14 years of ownership of a copper smelter in Namibia.
The human rights experts, in a newly disclosed letter to Dundee Precious Metals Inc. DPM-T, say they found evidence that arsenic from the smelter has polluted the soil, water and air in the town of Tsumeb, causing high rates of illnesses among smelter workers and town residents.
They also allege that the company erected barriers to medical care, making it difficult for its local workers to get access to independent doctors and basic information about their health, including their medical records.
The Canadian company purchased the African smelter in 2010 and operated it until last year, when it sold the smelter to a Chinese company, Sinomine Resource Group, for US$20-million.
DPM used the smelter to provide the special processing it needed for the output of its Chelopech copper mine in Bulgaria, where the minerals had an exceptionally high arsenic content. The Bulgarian government decreed that the minerals were too hazardous to process locally, and the European Union also banned the processing of such minerals, so DPM sent the minerals to Namibia instead.
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An investigation into the smelter by The Globe and Mail and other media in Europe and Namibia, published in January, highlighted laboratory tests and analyses by a Swiss university that found alarming levels of arsenic in the town’s soil and plants, and in its inhabitants.
The tests at the University of Bern found that the arsenic levels in hair samples in Tsumeb residents were up to 100 times higher than that of people who are not exposed to arsenic. 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.
The independent UN experts, known as rapporteurs, were appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to work on environmental and health issues globally. They collaborated with U.S. researchers who probed the issues at the Namibian smelter and the surrounding area.
“Doctors treating smelter workers and Tsumeb community members have confirmed a correlation between pollution from the Tsumeb smelter and health symptoms experienced by those exposed to said pollution,” the letter to DPM says.
“The government of Namibia and the Smelter management, under both Dundee Precious Metals Inc. and now Sinomine, have continuously denied workers and community members information relating to their health and the environment.”
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In addition to the letter sent to DPM in June, the UN experts sent similar letters to others with a connection to the smelter, including the governments of Canada, Namibia and China. Canadian diplomats in Geneva acknowledged the letter and said they were working on a response.
DPM has not replied to the letter so far, according to a UN webpage that tracks the responses to such letters.
Jennifer Cameron, a spokesperson for DPM, did not directly reply to questions from The Globe about the UN letter and the allegations in it. Instead, she provided a lengthy list of environmental improvements and health monitoring programs that she said DPM had introduced after its takeover of the smelter.
“Protection of workers, the community and the environment is central to DPM’s core values,” she said. “During our 14 years in Namibia, DPM invested more than US$400-million to bring the operation up to Namibian and international standards.”
In addition to their concerns about health damage, the UN experts also alleged that “poor waste management practices” at the smelter have caused arsenic to enter the soil in Tsumeb and to enter vegetables grown in gardens in the town.
Despite repeated questions from The Globe, neither DPM nor Sinomine have disclosed how much arsenic-trioxide waste has accumulated at dump sites at the smelter, but former managers have said that it could amount to about 300,000 tonnes – one of the world’s largest accumulations of arsenic waste.
Ms. Cameron, in replies to questions from The Globe in January, said the waste is securely bagged to prevent air contamination, in a facility built in line with international standards, and the site is regularly inspected and independently audited.
Sarah Dávila, director of the International Human Rights Clinic at the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law, described the situation in Tsumeb as a human rights crisis.
“The smelter in Tsumeb has exercised a great deal of influence and has been permitted to act with impunity over the years,” said Prof. Dávila, one of a team of researchers from her university who helped the UN experts.
“The people of Tsumeb have paid the highest price, the price of living in an environmental ‘sacrifice zone,’” she said in a statement.
Alyson Lofthouse, assistant dean of the Global Health Program at the University of Illinois, said the Tsumeb situation is an extraordinary public health crisis “with generational consequences.”