A worrying situation. … In the Gulf Musonoi, near Kolwezi in the south of the Democratic Republic of Congo, women are in danger.

Cases of sexual infections, congenital malformations and stillborn births are all part of the daily routine for Julie Nshinda, a nurse who has been working there for six years.

Each month, her medical center sees 5-10 women.

To denounce this situation, Julie decided to break her silence in front of our cameras.

A woman may arrive with complaints of lower abdominal pain, and when I examine her I find that the fetus is dead and decomposing. We ask her to have an ultrasound examination, and then we take her in urgently, because we fear maternal death.

According to her, the pollution that can be seen from a distance is at the root of the problem. The pollution in question is caused by the extraction of cobalt and copper — from the COMMUS open-cast mine, which overlooks the town.

In a study published in March 2024, the NGOs RAID and AFREWATCH confirmed pollution in the region. Based on more than 22 scientific studies — and 20 civil society reports — the document shows that the rivers, lakes, streams and groundwater near the country’s cobalt and copper mines are seriously polluted by mining activities.

Rivers near the country’s cobalt and copper mines are severely polluted by mining activities.

According to 56% of respondents in the report, pollution is affecting the gynecological and reproductive health of women and girls.

56% of respondents say pollution affects women’s gynecological and reproductive health.

Environmental impact of mining in the DRC

In July 2024, a Mongabay film crew met Professor Célestin Banza, who is at the heart of this report.

Often in the quarries, the women are there to wash the ore. There are men who enter the artisanal mines to dig and bring the ore to the surface. But the women are there, either for example to crush the ore blocks to reduce the dimensions, or for transportation by carrying it on the head or for cleaning to have a higher concentration of these metals.

Professor Banza says he believes that constant contact with these minerals, which contain copper, cobalt, uranium, lead, and arsenic in varying quantities, is highly toxic — even at low concentrations.

In the town of Kolwezi, there is no shortage of testimonies from relatives of victims of mining pollution.

My granddaughter works from time to time in a small-scale mine.

When she goes there, she collects the rocks and, as soon as she has a certain quantity, she goes to the river. There, she cleans them. And when it’s clean, she goes to sell it to the buyers called traders. This is where she was exposed.

When you’re wearing your pants, you need to put on a panty liner or a pad to avoid exposing your genitals.You can’t go out there like that. You can’t go there without dressing accordingly.

It’s to prevent her genital organs from absorbing the toxic substances. The medical staff taught us that, if you want to go into a mine. But it still doesn’t work. A woman’s body is always exposed to uranium.

Since I’ve been here in 2014, I think I’ve seen three or four women give birth to monsters. There have been several abortions and especially miscarriages! All this is a consequence of COMMUS’ activities. We’re exhausted, we don’t know what to do. Nobody is looking after us.

The women work in the mines to ensure their survival. But where they extract the ore, the level of radioactivity is high. So they expose themselves to radiation, which affects the uterus and complicates the case.

We have not yet received any response from officials of the COMMUS mine that overlooks Kolwezi.

Whether they are cleaning the stones, carrying them or selling them, these women are not informed about the radiation that the ores could produce.

In certain small-scale mines, like Kapata, located a few kilometers away, mining cooperatives have been established to safeguard the women who wash the ores.

A practice that is far from being widespread.

Direct contact with the ore is not the sole reason for these women’s health problems.

Without even working in the mines, some of them are directly affected by the region’s polluted rivers.

Lake water from the Gulf … we used to use it for all our household needs, drinking it and bathing in it. Nowadays, we no longer drink it. If you wash yourself in this water, you get itchy skin. The water in the lake is contaminated by mining products. We used to drink this water. Now they’ve put machines in there, and we don’t really know what they’re used for.

That’s the root of our health problems, because in the past we didn’t have as many cases of miscarriages. I’ve had four successive miscarriages. Three months later, I had a miscarriage. I had another pregnancy, which also didn’t last beyond three months. That wasn’t the case in the past.

We can be contaminated either through the skin, because we handle it at all times, when we are cleaning clothes in the river or because we consume it. We use the water for bathing, or there are aerosols, droplets that are inhaled or absorbed through the mouth.

Pollution is becoming almost generalized in all areas where minerals are mined. There is diffuse pollution. Environmental rules are not respected at all. Very few companies respect environmental law.

Women are not the only ones affected. … Professor Banza is currently investigating the link between mining pollution and reduced fertility in local men