On the day that a chief executive of an international company became an instant billionaire, it emerged that he had failed to reply to ten African children who had written begging him to stop the pollution from a mine that was blighting their lives. Ivan Glasenberg will be catapulted into the ranks of the world’s richest people by the listing of Glencore International on the London Stock Exchange, with his personal holding worth $9.5 billion (£5.8 billion).
But his celebrations will be overshadowed by the revelation that Glencore has been exposing thousands of Zambians to dangerous levels of sulphur dioxide emissions, which cause premature deaths from respiratory diseases and destroy crops by creating acid rain.
Last May, Mr Glasenberg received a bundle of letters from children at a school exposed on a daily basis to sulphur dioxide pollution from the nearby Mopani Copper Mines (MCM) complex. In the letters, obtained by The Times, the children described how clouds of toxic particles made them choke, burnt their throats, poisoned the school’s fruit trees and forced teachers to close windows, leaving them sweltering in their classrooms.
They pleaded with him to give them the same protection from pollution that has been accepted for decades as standard for communities near copper plants in the developed world.
Rabecca, 14, wrote: “The emissions are so powerful and irritating to the eyes, nose, throat and lips such that you always have to cover the face each time the emissions are released. We would like to here [sic] from you soon.”
Tumpoka, 13, wrote: “The emissions have so far destroyed our flower beds and the school garden.”
Another pupil, Nchimunta, 14, wrote: “We get sick of different types of diseases such as coughing and sneezing. Learning is also disturbed when sulphur dioxide is released, sometimes windows have to be closed. When we grow crops, flowers and trees they all get burnt.”
MCM, 73 per cent of which is owned by Glencore, received a €48million (£42 million) loan in 2005 from the European Investment Bank to invest in equipment that would capture sulphur emissions. The company claims it is now capturing half the plant’s emissions but it refused to respond when asked yesterday why its emission reduction programme would not be completed until 2015, 15 years after it took control of MCM. A minerals expert who advises Glencore told The Times that the equipment could have been fully installed within five years.
The Environmental Council of Zambia reported in 2009 that sulphur dioxide emissions from parts of the plant were up to 70 times the maximum healthy limit set by the World Health Organisation.
The company’s listing prospectus, published this month, confirms the environmental breaches. A mineral expert’s report, which Glencore was required to publish to explain the risks investors would face, said sulphur dioxide emissions from MCM were “consistently exceeding” environmental limits. It said that the breaches were a “significant risk” because MCM had missed even the extended deadline for reducing the pollution. Three monitoring stations outside the plant repeatedly recorded breaches of air pollution limits.
The report described various illegal discharges of hazardous fluids into rivers, including an acid leak that had contaminated the town’s water supply and resulted in “hospitalisation and treatment of a number of people”.
Anthony Lipmann, a Surrey-based metal trader and former chairman of the Minor Metals Trade Association, visited Mufulira, the town next to the plant, last year. He said: “I was caught in a sulphur storm and immediately began to gag and struggled to breathe. The children are exposed to these clouds several times a day. They try to cover their mouths but they still inhale the sulphur,” he said. “I also saw the bleached earth, reduced crops and corrosive effect of acid rain on roofs, paint and lungs.”
Mr Lipmann gathered letters from the children at the Mine Basic School in Mufulira and sent them to Mr Glasenberg. In his covering letter he wrote that the pollution was blighting the lives of 300,000 people.
“The sulphur emissions from MCM are much higher than would be acceptable in any Western European country. Such behaviour lies ill with your company’s professed policy of ensuring that your operations are not harmful to the environment,” he wrote.
Mr Lipmann said he sent the letters twice by DHL to ensure that Mr Glasenberg could not overlook them. “Neither Glasenberg nor anyone from Glencore replied, to my knowledge, to the children’s letters.
“Why is it that the places in Africa from where copper is taken see so little benefit? We need to shine a light on bad practice which takes place far away from the view of investors on the London Stock Exchange,” he said.
Tony Simmonds, a GP from Somerset who has visited Mufulira five times, said: “You could feel the acid attacking your lungs. It was clear it would be bad for the health of the local population in terms of respiratory diseases. It would be precipitating asthma.”
He said Glencore had been failing to invest in the local community and local roads and the mine hospital had deteriorated since it took over the mine. The hospital no longer had the capacity to deal with serious cases, meaning patients had to travel 40 miles to another hospital.
The mineral expert’s report in the company’s prospectus refers to the need for Glencore to manage resentment in Mufulira about the mine.
It said: “Complaints have been logged using the company’s community feedback system. There have been no cases of concerted civil action relating to this issue, which suggests that dissatisfaction is not at a level at which mine stoppages or similar outbreaks of anger or disillusionment with a perceived lack of benefits flowing from the mine are likely.”
Mr Lipmann, who was contacted by the company’s public relations officer, said: “He fobbed me off by saying the company was meeting the legal requirements in Zambia.”
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