What it’s like to live in the most polluted place on earth

Just 30 miles from Johannesburg, in a South African region known as the Vaal Triangle, 1.7 million people are living in a crossfire of some of the most dangerous pollution on Earth.

Today, it has a darker claim to fame. Vereeniging regularly registers the highest concentration of microscopic emissions known as PM2.5, according to Bloomberg Green analysis of data from nonprofit OpenAQ, which runs an open-source network of over 4 000 sensors monitoring particulate pollution worldwide. The often-invisible particulates travel deep into the lungs, which can lead to cancers and cardiac problems.

This resistance may soon prove futile. The environment ministry, under new leadership, has signaled that it expects the companies to comply with tougher pollution limits set to come into effect in 2025. ArcelorMittal and the government have also been sued by activists who previously won a ruling that the state was breaching the constitutional right to clean air in nearby Mpumalanga.

Portia Mofokeng at her home in Mooidraai. Toxins from industrial emissions in the Vaal Triangle are causing respiratory diseases and hundreds of premature deaths every year across the region. Image: Leon Sadiki/Bloomberg That, she says, means there’s little community opposition to the pollution because “their brothers, their cousins work there. So what’s going to happen?” she said.

ArcelorMittal said it has slashed particulate emissions by 87% since 2007 by suppressing dust and replacing old coal-burning equipment, while reducing other pollutants. Sasol said it has cut particulate emissions by 75% since 2000 largely by installing electrostatic precipitators — devices that attract dust to electrically charged plates. Particulate emissions from all of Eskom’s plants, by contrast, are at a 31-year-high.

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