#lead pollution

Is there a link between lifetime lead exposure and dementia?

Suspend Mining Operations in Lead Waste that Imperil Residents in Kabwe

(Johannesburg, September 4, 2025) – A South African-owned company is providing access to toxic lead-bearing waste in the Zambian city of Kabwe despite immense health risks for local residents, Human Rights Watch said today. The material derives from waste material at a former mine that has never been cleaned up and has been the source of mass lead poisoning among residents, especially children.

Enviro Processing Limited (EPL), a subsidiary of the South African company Jubilee Metals Group, holds a small-scale mining license for the former Kabwe mine area and its waste, known as “Black Mountain.” Jubilee Metals claims it “improves the quality of life of those living in proximity” of former mines. The company has apparently entered a deal with a Zambian company and a Chinese company to sell the waste for the purpose of extracting zinc. But the planned removal and transport of waste risks spreading the toxic lead further.

“The South African company Jubilee Metals, alongside Zambian and Chinese counterparts, are selling lead-bearing waste in a manner posing a serious risk to children’s health,” said Juliane Kippenberg, associate children's rights director at Human Rights Watch. “The Zambian government needs to fully enforce its environmental and mining laws, and protect people’s right to a healthy environment.”

Kabwe is one of the most lead-polluted places globally because of contamination frm a former lead and zinc mine that was established during the British colonial period, closed in 1994, and was never cleaned up.

Human Rights Watch published a report in March 2025 documenting the ongoing harmful mining, removal, and processing of Kabwe’s lead waste by several companies, including EPL, Union Star Industry, and several other Chinese processing companies. Human Rights Watch found that the Zambian government facilitated the activities by issuing mining and processing licenses to several companies.

The Environmental Protection Agency on Wednesday announced it has determined that lead emitted from airplanes is a danger to public health, opening the door for the agency’s first limits on lead fuel in aviation.

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The move puts the Biden administration in the middle of a brewing fight over how long airports — particularly smaller ones — can continue selling leaded gasoline, despite the health hazards from this powerful neurotoxin. More than 170,000 smaller planes, known as piston-engine aircraft, still use leaded gasoline, according to the EPA, and there is an ongoing dispute about how quickly this form of fuel can be phased out at thousands of airports nationwide.

The agency first proposed the move last year. It is a formal step known as an “endangerment finding,” and it now obligates the agency under the Clean Air Act to set new rules on what aircraft engines can emit.

Now that the EPA has made its determination, the Federal Aviation Administration said Wednesday that it will move forward with rulemaking aimed at controlling or eliminating aviation lead emissions from piston-engine aircraft.

That work is happening as Congress also considers a long-term reauthorization of the FAA, including a bipartisan proposal that passed the House that would effectively require small airports to continue selling leaded gasoline.

Generations after scientists found that lead was dangerous to humans, American infrastructure is still rife with lead: homes, water pipes, automobile fuel and more. This means an astounding number of America's most vulnerable children have high levels of lead in their blood. To understand why lead has been so difficult to remove from one of the world's wealthiest nations, we have to understand just how obsessed America was with lead – and how the industry spread propaganda about the benefits of lead, even after research showed it was dangerous.