A report by Action for Southern Africa (ACTSA) and Environment Africa Zambia about lead pollution in Kabwe, Zambia, will be launched on Thursday 23 October 2025 from 2.30pm to 3.30pm, in the Houses of Parliament at a launch for parliamentarians and members of the press.
19-25 October marks the World Health Organization’s Lead Poisoning Prevention Week, which this year stresses that there is ‘no safe level’ of lead and that action is needed to protect children.
The event will explore the colonial origins of the pervasive pollution in the world’s most toxic town, and its continuing environmental and medical impacts on women and children, drawing on environmental, medical and legal expertise and new case studies of mothers affected. It will examine who is to blame, the campaign for justice, and what legal and other routes can be used to hold corporations accountable.
This is ahead of a critical appeal hearing in South Africa on 3-4 November as part of a class action suit filed against Anglo American on behalf of 140,000 women and children in Kabwe.
The panellists will include Dr Stephan Böse-O’Reilly, environmental and child health expert at the University Hospital Munich, and Richard Meeran, Partner at Leigh Day, who are working with Mbuyisa Moleele Attorneys, the South African Law Firm bringing the case.
BACKGROUND
Decades of exploitative mining during British colonialism made Kabwe, in Zambia, the world’s most toxic town and a UN-designated ‘sacrifice zone’. Since then, generations of women and children have suffered life-threatening lead poisoning. Even at low levels, lead can cause serious and often irreversible damage to organs and the neurological system. There is no safe level of lead for humans, and children’s developing bodies make them particularly affected. A 2018 study found that over 95% of children in the most affected townships had elevated blood lead levels, and half had levels requiring medical intervention.
The scale of this environmental health disaster has been evident for decades. Now, 140,000 women and children have filed a class action against mining giant Anglo American. A class of 12 representative Claimants have instructed South African attorneys Mbuyisa Moleele and advised by UK law firm Leigh Day to bring the case against Anglo American plc, the London-headquartered mining giant. Although the class action was dismissed in 2023 by the Johannesburg High Court, the same judge has granted an appeal, to be heard on 3 and 4 November this year (livestreaming will be available).
A public launch will be held at LSE Law School in London on 27 October.