In 2011, a report by the regional authorities of Gauteng, the area that surrounds South Africa's economic capital Johannesburg, confirmed that 1.6 million people were living in townships near to, or even in, one of the 400 zones marked affected by mining waste.
Mariette Liefferink has been sounding the alarm for almost a decade: "The residue from gold extraction contains uranium," says the head of the Federation for a Sustainable Environment (FSE), a local environmental organization. By looking at recent analyses, these dump sites also contain, amongst other things, "aluminum, arsenic, mercury and copper," she adds.
No comments:
Post a Comment