Toxic metals studies add to frustrations surrounding Swiss-owned mine in Peru
Over 1,000 kilometres from Peru’s capital, and half a world away from Glencore’s headquarters in Zug, Switzerland, the residents of one of the Andean country’s poorest regions, living near a huge mining complex it owns, are still reeling from the effects of the Covid-19 pandemic.
After Peru imposed one of the world’s harshest lockdown
measures, ordering businesses to shut and interregional transport to be
suspended for extended periods, many of the Espinar region’s inhabitants sank
even further into poverty, having lost their jobs in the informal sector. By
May 2020, after the first case of Covid-19 came to the mountainous district in
southeastern Peru, medical services soon became overwhelmed, ahead of
subsequent, even more severe waves of infection in early 2021.
Lack of clean drinking water, which residents in the
district of Espinar have long attributed to the mine, has complicated the side
effects of the lockdown. When limited travel resumed, only locals with
relations able to travel to the villages could receive bottled water, due to
the absence of mobility in the most isolated areas. Everyone else has to put up
with whatever water is available.
“My sister brought (bottled) water, because you can’t drink
this water that we have,” Yenny Kana Magaño told SWI swissinfo.ch in June. She
spoke from Huisa, a small community next to the mine, where she returned to her
family home after losing her job as a field labourer in 2020 in a neighboring
province. She said the family used to rely on a well for water. “But the water
has practically disappeared. Before the water was crystal clear, but now it’s
greasy, full of sediment.”
Relations between the community and Glencore’s mining
operation were already strained before the pandemic, as a 2019 SWI swissinfo.ch
report from EspinarExternal link showed. As the Switzerland-based mining giant
planned a $1.47 billion (CHF 1.35) expansion of its Tintaya-Antapaccay mine,
Indigenous villagers complained that the operation had affected their
wellbeing. Lack of clean water and toxic metal contamination left animals in
their herds dying or aborting, and people became severely ill, they said.
“The dust is constant,” Kana Magaño said during a WhatsApp
call. “It dirties the water, the river and gets into my eyes. Sometimes we call
the manager at the mine. Before my mother would not say anything. But not
anymore.”
The complex, located at approximately 4100 meters above sea
level, extracts mostly copper, but also silver and gold. The older part of the
mine, Tintaya, which has largely been retired and straddles one of the four
watersheds located within the complex, is one of its tailing sites, where waste
from excavation is dumped. Others are found scattered across the vast fenced-in
property, guarded by its own security force.
Burden of data
In May, Amnesty International published a studyExternal link
that found that levels of metals and toxic substances in test participants from
11 communities and in water samples taken near the mines presented health risks
to the population in the area. The investigation, conducted between 2019 and
April of this year, found elevated levels of metals and toxic substances,
including arsenic, manganese, cadmium, lead and mercury in blood and urine
samples in 78% of trial volunteers.
Scientific evidenceExternal link confirms that exposure to
the toxic substances can cause everything from headaches and nausea to serious
damage in organs, including kidney disease, lung and brain damage, and even
death. The metals are also harmful to animal health.
“This is a first level of evidence, a first step,” Fernando
Serrano, who headed the research, said about the investigation. Toxic metals
may enter the body through breathing contaminated air, consuming contaminated
water and food or by contact with contaminated dust according to Serrano, a
professor at the University of St Louis in Missouri in the United States. He
explained though, that regular rigorous monitoring of water and the environment
over time would be needed to define the precise source of the contamination in
Espinar.
While earlier studies had been conducted in response to
residents’ concerns, the Amnesty study run in collaboration with the regional
civil rights group Derechos Humanos Sin FronterasExternal link, or Human Rights
without Borders, was the first rigorous independent investigation that tested
the residents themselves from throughout the affected region and was done
according to updated reference standards.
Glencore had previously dismissed traces of metals in
earlier water and animal testing as normal in a mineral-rich environment. The
company did not respond directly to questions on the latest report published by
Amnesty linking mining activity and levels of toxic waste in water supplies.
“Antapaccay's operation area of influence includes the
Cañipia and Salado Rivers. Both rivers have mineralised water due to the
natural presence of minerals in the soil. This has been previously confirmed by
the Peruvian authorities, among them the National Water Authority”, Glencore
said in emailed responses to SWI swissinfo.ch’s questions.
Around the same time that the Amnesty investigation was
published, another study conducted by the Health Ministry that monitored water
in 13 communities near the mine came to similar conclusions as Amnesty’s,
showing the presence of arsenic, as well as other metals in water samples. Only
in one of the 43 locations around the mine where water samples were taken did
tests indicate that water was suitable for human consumption.
At the hospital in Espinar, a town of 32,000 inhabitants
roughly 30 minutes on an unpaved road from the closest point of Glencore’s
sprawling complex, Nubia Blanco Pillco, its director, told SWI swissinfo.ch
that during the pandemic, residents felt abandoned due to the lack of proper
medical attention particularly in remote areas.
Health facilities throughout Espinar are limited, even in
the district’s main town, where its category two hospital is just a notch above
the basic puestos de salud, or health posts, in communities scattered outside
the massive mining complex.
In the hospital itself, water is scarce, available only for
a few hours a day. “It’s the same water as everyone else receives. It’s not
treated for metals and residues obstruct pipes (in the building),” the hospital
official said.
In addition to COVID-19 overwhelming health capacities,
since last year, one of the nurses at the hospital developed lung cancer, while
a doctor was diagnosed with cancer of the thyroids. Half a dozen patients
developed other forms of the illness. The hospital doesn’t have a CT scan, a
lab for taking and analysing blood samples, or even an adequate wheelchair. “So
much is needed,” said Blanco Pillco.
In spite of earlier warnings of the harmful effects of
exposure to toxic metals, public health investmentExternal link for the care of
patients suffering from the effects of exposure to the substances in this mining
country has fallen in recent years.
In 2020, Peru’s health ministry issued a momentous
statementExternal link that some 10 million Peruvians were at risk of exposure
to heavy metals and other toxic substances, including 6 million to arsenic and
metalloids. The pre-existing platform known as the National Health Strategy for
the Care of Contamination with Heavy Metals and other Chemical
SubstancesExternal link identified Espinar as an affected area where its
population is at risk of exposure.
A decision in December meanwhile by the Cusco Superior Court
ordered Peru’s health ministry to design and implement a public health strategy
demanded a year earlier by a court in Espinar, to address the issue of
contamination from heavy metals, within a timeframe of 90 days.
Amnesty’s report condemned the Peruvian state for having
long failed in its obligation to guarantee the right to health to Indigenous
communities near the Antapaccay mine. It too recommended that a holistic public
and environmental health strategy be implemented to deal with the contamination
and exposure to the toxic substances, and guarantee access to safe and
accessible water and sanitation to Indigenous communities.
Serrano, however lamented that Peru lacked the capacity to
design and implement a dedicated toxic metals health programme. “Overall, the health system is so broken –
which was made evident by the pandemic – and specifically with regard to this
issue, that we will have to move heaven and Earth.”
In testing people’s blood and urine for five toxic metals,
Serrano said he was stuck by the large discrepancies in reference values found
in Peruvian regulations in comparison to international standards. “How do we
know if (blood and urine levels) are high or low, whether you are protected or
in danger?”
The lack of awareness by public officials of the risk higher
levels of exposure to the metals angers Blanco Pillco, the hospital director.
“In other countries, if such percentages (of toxic metals in blood) would be
recorded, the mining company would be breaking the law, and would be punished.”
Officials at the health ministry and regional health
authorities did not respond to requests to comment.
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