Thomas Mnguni often woke to find the windows and floors of his home covered in a layer of black dust. Living between two coal mines and a landfill in Middelburg, South Africa, he and his family breathed some of the country’s most polluted air.
Thomas Mnguni often woke to find the windows and floors of his home covered in a layer of black dust. Living between two coal mines and a landfill in Middelburg, South Africa, he and his family breathed some of the country’s most polluted air.
When Mnguni’s son developed symptoms of asthma, a doctor recommended that the family move to a different part of town. Now living about six miles from the mines, the 14-year-old is doing better. But others in the area aren’t so fortunate. Residents of Middelburg and other communities in an industrialized swath of the Highveld, a plateau in central South Africa, are well acquainted with air pollution and its toll on health. The area — located east of Johannesburg and with a population of 4.7 million — is riddled with coal mines, coal-fired power plants, petrochemical facilities, metal smelters, chemical producers, and other industrial complexes. Mnguni, in his work as a community campaigner for the environmental group groundWork, has met many others dealing with the health consequences of the poor air quality, ranging from asthma to lung cancer.
Researchers estimate that heightened air pollution levels in the Highveld cause hundreds of early deaths every year. A 2019 Greenpeace report ranked the region among the highest in the world for emissions of two dangerous pollutants, sulfur dioxide and nitrogen dioxide. “It’s emblematic of one of the worst situations of air pollution in the world,” says David Boyd, a United Nations specialist on human rights and the environment. A substantial portion of the Highveld’s population lives in townships — underdeveloped areas on the outskirts of towns— among the mines or in the shadows of industrial facilities.
Read more: YaleEnvironment 360
