BOULDER, Colorado — That smartphone you use, the electric vehicle you drive and your laptop all rely on lithium-ion batteries.
The material inside those batteries is cobalt, much of which is mined in Africa. New research out of Boulder suggests that mining for cobalt is also polluting parts of Africa.
According to the Cobalt Institute, in 2022, 73% of the world's supply of cobalt was mined in Africa's Copperbelt, a region which straddles the border of Zambia and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
According to the US Bureau of Mines and the US Geological survey, Cobalt production in that area increased about 600% between 1990 and 2021.
The question: Did that increase in production mean an increase in pollution?
"In Africa, there's barely regulation at the moment," said Pietrenel Levelt, who is the director of the Atmospheric Chemistry Lab at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in Boulder.
Levelt recently completed a study using satellite data to measure emissions from these cobalt and copper mines in Africa.
"We also showed that the increase in this pollution relates to an increase in production," Levelt said.
Levelt believes much of the pollution is caused by the heavy diesel machinery used in the mines. Her research also suggests that the mining operations have significant impact on the air quality of nearby communities.
NCAR is now working with scientists in Africa to increase regulations on the mining there.
"I see my task as delivering the best data we can," Levelt said. "The countries and policymakers themselves have to decide what to do with it."
The researchers and her colleagues are also advocating to get a satellite into space over the global south that can take these kinds of measurements multiple times a day.
We already have those kinds of satellites over the United States and Europe.
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