Just fifty kilometers from Johannesburg, in a South African region known as the Vaal Triangle, 1.7 million people live in the crossfire of some of the most dangerous pollution on Earth.
From the highway towards Vanderbijlpark, you can see the thick veil of smoke enveloping Africa's largest steel mill. To the southeast, near the town of Vereeniging, the Lethabo coal-fired power station, whose name means “happiness,” sadly spews ash and toxic sulfur dioxide. Farther south, across from a petrochemical plant in Sasolburg, an adjacent neighborhood regularly smells of rotten eggs due to hydrogen sulfide in the air.
The plants offer steady work to residents at a time when one in three South Africans are unemployed, but they are also emitting harmful emissions at such high levels that Vereeniging is, by some measures, the most polluted city in the world.
The toxins are causing hundreds of premature deaths each year across the Vaal Triangle and respiratory illnesses in many of those still breathing. The situation is a stark reminder of the toll that the world's dependence on steel, oil and coal is having on human health, and of the difficulty a green transition faces if it costs the livelihood of workers who depend on old-fashioned jobs. economy.
Vereeniging is relatively unknown outside South Africa, but the country owes much of its status as the continent's most industrialized nation to him. It was the site of the country's first coal discovery in 1878, helping magnates Sammy Marks and Hendrik van der Bijl establish one of South Africa's most concentrated industrial areas. At the city's Vaal Teknorama museum, the last piece of coal extracted from the Cornelia mine sits on a desk. A painting from 1923 shows a happy image of the local Vaal River, with pleasure boats cruising along a waterway lined with steel mills and power stations.
Coal “has ensured the industrialization and economic growth of the area,” a plaque proclaims.
Today, it has a darker claim to fame. Vereeniging regularly records the highest concentration of microscopic emissions known as PM2.5, according to Bloomberg Green's analysis of data from the nonprofit OpenAQ, which runs an open source network of more than 4,000 sensors that monitor particulate pollution. Worldwide. The often invisible particles penetrate deep into the lungs, which can lead to cancer and heart problems.
In the Vaal Triangle, many of them come from industrial plants, meaning they often include heavy metals and other toxins that are much more harmful than ordinary dust, according to Ranajit Sahu, an air quality consultant who has worked extensively in South Africa's pollution.
The issue has been on the South African government's radar for decades. In the mid-2000s, it designated the region as a Vaal Triangle Air Basin Priority Area, the first area where it would make a concerted effort to reduce air pollution. Since then, air quality has barely improved, as companies requested and received exemptions from emissions limits and dysfunctional municipalities stopped collecting waste, forcing residents to burn it. Traffic on the roads that cross the region only increases pollution.
Energy company Eskom Holdings SOC Ltd. and petrochemical company Sasol Ltd. have repeatedly said they cannot afford or do not have the space to install equipment required by law to reduce sulfur dioxide pollution. ArcelorMittal SA has in the past threatened to close the former state-owned steelworks. They have also repeatedly urged the government to consider the impact of stricter and more costly pollution standards on its operations in a country with one of the highest unemployment rates in the world.
This resistance may soon prove futile. The Environment Ministry, under new leadership, has signaled that it expects companies to comply with stricter pollution limits that come into force in 2025. ArcelorMittal and the government have also been sued by activists who previously won a ruling that The state was violating the constitutional right to clean air in nearby Mpumalanga.
Possibly no settlement in the area has had to make a greater sacrifice for South Africa's economic benefits than the township of Sharpeville, near the Eskom power station in Lethabo.
The facility burns low-quality coal, meaning more pollution is produced per unit of energy generated. A 2017 study by a leading air pollution expert attributed 204 premature deaths a year to the Lethabo plant. The study, conducted by UK-based consultant Mike Holland, was one of the first to detail the extent of pollution from power plants in South Africa. Eskom has since disputed this, but claims its own research has found it kills about 330 people a year across its plants.
An independent study by California-based Sahu showed Lethabo exceeded emission limits for particulate matter, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen oxides 620 times between April 2016 and December 2017, more than any of the other 14 countries.
Portia Mofokeng, 35, is one of the residents living a short distance from Lethabo. She developed asthma in 2013 and blames her condition and her regular hospital visits on industrial pollution. Mofokeng can see the plant's cooling towers from his corrugated steel hut in Mooidraai, a field that once belonged to a local farm.
"The doctor told me that if I want to be cured, I should move out of here, maybe go where there is no pollution," she said, sitting in a cloth-covered chair and holding two inhalers, which cost a few dollars each. She often has to buy medications herself with an $18 monthly welfare check: "I have nowhere to go."
When he applied for a job as a security guard in Lethabo, he was told his condition prevented him from getting the job. Her community considers the industries that make it sick to be the only secure source of employment in the region.
That, he says, means that there is little community opposition to the contamination because “their brothers, their cousins work there. "So what's going to happen?"
Near Zamdela, the impoverished township abutting Sasol's Sigma coal mine and its Sasolburg petrochemical plant, any hand is left black with coal dust if you run it over the stair railings of a largely apartment block. abandoned. The company says it monitors dust on its “fence.”
In a small brick house, Kido Mafisi, who has lived in Zamdela since the late 1970s, displays his medications and says he often wakes up to find black and gray dust on his window sills.
“I can't breathe,” he said. "I have asthma, bronchitis and skin rashes," she adds.
South Africa's environment department maintains that progress has been made on air quality in the Vaal Triangle, noting that big emitters such as Sasol, ArcelorMittal and Eskom have taken some steps to curb their emissions.
ArcelorMittal said it has reduced particulate emissions by 87% since 2007 by suppressing dust and replacing old coal-burning equipment, while reducing other pollutants. Sasol said it has reduced particulate matter emissions by 75% since 2000, largely by installing electrostatic precipitators, devices that draw dust onto electrically charged plates. By contrast, particulate matter emissions from all Eskom plants are at their highest level in 31 years. Pollution is exacerbated by the fact that sulfur dioxide, emitted as a gas, is often oxidized with water vapor to form sulfuric acid particles.
Sasol said it runs an offset program that mitigates its particulate emissions by removing community waste that would otherwise have been burned. Eskom is considering a similar programme.
Still, there is little evidence of scavenging. Across the road from the Sasol plant, pigs and goats scavenge through garbage dumped in the open field adjacent to rows of small brick houses and tin shacks built by the government. Bernard Mafata, a garbage collector who drags a cart between informal landfills and recycling centers, says residents regularly burn garbage because the municipality no longer removes it.
Sasol said its offset projects are equivalent to preventing the emission of 40 metric tons of particles a year, or 0.5% of its annual pollutant output from all its plants. He noted that the program is not designed to result in “similar” mitigation.
In an area of the world as polluted as the Vaal Triangle, it can be difficult to see positive changes on the horizon. But there are some signs for hope.
Beyond the new emissions limits the government will impose next year, there is growing international pressure for companies across South Africa to clean up their operations. Some of the world's richest nations are funding a $9.3 billion plan to help South Africa transition away from coal. The Lethabo plant, which will begin closing in 2036, may follow the path of Eskom's older facilities, which are planned for conversion to renewable energy and other activities through the incentive programme.
Sasol also operates a pilot green hydrogen facility in Sasolburg, as advertised on a billboard in the city.
If these advances are successful, they will help in the battle against the long-term threat of climate change. However, they will not help the people who are now inhaling coal's unpleasant legacy.
For residents within the mess left by South Africa's industrial giants, patience is wearing thin. “We would like to get compensation. They must pay for us,” Mofokeng said. "They are causing the problem."
