Mining Impacts · impact
Lead exposure
Health · Both
- Category
- Health
- Timescale
- Both
Mitigation
Emission controls and stack monitoring, soil replacement in affected neighbourhoods, buffer zones, and blood-lead screening of local children rather than of workers alone.
Case
Kabwe in Zambia, smelting lead from 1902 to 1994, left soil and dust contamination that continues to produce some of the highest childhood blood-lead levels recorded anywhere.
Mechanism
Lead reaches people as smelter emissions, as dust from ore stockpiles and tailings, and as contaminated soil that children then put their hands in. It is a developmental neurotoxin with no threshold known to be safe, and the exposure that matters most happens before school age.
Where
SmelterOpen pitUnderground
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