For years, various studies on the incidence of pollution in Cartagena were kept quiet to avoid alarming the population. However, these studies indicated “an increase in the mortality rate and use of health services, respiratory disorders and other diseases, as well as increased use of medications.” wrote Member of Parliament Pedro Marset Campos to the European Commission in 2000.

When air pollution monitoring began in 1960, the cities of Huelva and Cartagena soon appeared on the list of the seven most polluted cities in Spain. The Potasas (Cartagena) and Fertiberia (Huelva) factories were directly implicated. In Cartagena, “the situation has continuously deteriorated since 1996, reaching record pollution levels in 1999.” explained the member of parliament. In 2001, the Ministry of the Environment named Cartagena as “the most polluted city in Spain”. A few months later, the Potasas factory closed, followed by the Zincsa plant in 2008.

In Cartagena, the situation is not so different. “About twenty people have died of cancer in the area” says Téodosio Romero, a former worker from the Zincsa and Potasas plants.

Talking about illnesses has not always been easy. It took the closure of both companies in the 2000s for the health impact to be recognized. “There were suspicions, but this led to conflicts with the workers who supported the lack of transparency. The fear of losing one's job promoted silence.” explains José Matías Peñas, a biology researcher who has actively campaigned for nearly ten years on the soil contamination scandal in the region. He is not the only one studying pollution phenomena. In 2017, pediatrician Juan Antonio Ortega and his team, from the Environmental Health Unit of La Arrixaca ⓘ University Hospital, linked children suffering from Hodgkin's lymphoma, with a cluster of cadmium, arsenic, lead, thorium, and other heavy metal contamination. “After analysis, they realized that these children were exposed to ambient air not only filled with heavy metals, but also radioactive elements.” says José Matías Peñas. “ These particles dissolve and allow cadmium and other elements to pass directly into the bloodstream when in contact with the mucous membrane.”

In turn, researchers from the National Center for Epidemiology at the Carlos III Health Institute, and geologists from the Geological and Mining Institute of Spain (IGME) have highlighted increased cancer mortality in areas contaminated by heavy metals, such as Huelva and Cartagena. In another study, researchers observe that “regions exposed to pollution from certain types of industrial facilities have a cancer mortality rate approximately 17% higher than those that are not.” ⓘ

As early as 2007, epidemiologists created a Municipal Atlas of Cancer Mortality in Spain, highlighting the spread of cancers in industrial areas. In the view of other researchers, “the Municipal Atlas of Cancer Mortality in Spain […] shows that environmental factors explain the distribution patterns of certain types of cancer much better than family genetics or habits.” ⓘ

In Wallonia’s records, there’s no trace of this former chemical dump. While the Federal Agency for Nuclear Control (FANC) monitors the radioactivity from the slag heap, which is classified as a “radon risk zone” under its supervision of the Prayon group, FANC does not manage other potential risks. In theory, the Walloon Region's Department of Environment and Water is responsible for monitoring waste and chemical pollution (cadmium, arsenic, lead, etc.). But no one there has heard of this phosphogypsum slag heap : “We have no results and/or information about the presence of an old slag heap or waste deposit. The Soil Remediation Department also confirmed by email that they have no data.” The Walloon Minister for Health and the Environment, Yves Coppieters (Les Engagés), has himself confirmed that the Walloon administration has no technical data concerning the Hardémont slag heap ⓘ.

Prayon, for its part, claims that the Hardémont landfill is “known to the authorities”, and that “there is no soil or water contamination caused by the deposit.” However, they are unable to say how many millions of tons of waste are piled there, who conducts the chemical monitoring (heavy metals, fluorine, acidity), or how it is carried out. Yet contamination risks exist. Wherever phosphogypsum has been piled up, groundwater and soil are affected.

Little known, the phosphate chemical industry became a key sector at the end of the 19th century, in Belgium and France. The first Belgian plant was founded in 1890 in Engis under the name “Société anonyme des produits chimiques d'Engis”, which later became Prayon.

At the time, to meet environmental and health requirements, metallurgical and steel industries began converting their sulphurous combustion gases into sulphuric acid. This acid was soon used to treat bones and phosphate ore, leading to the creation of phosphoric acid (P2O5), and the first chemical fertilizers, known as “superphosphates”.

Thirty years later, three more companies began phosphoric acid production in Flanders: Tessenderlo Chemie (1920), Établissements Kuhlmann – Rhône-Poulenc (1925), and Union Chimique Belge (1928). In the 1960s, the German group BASF opened a plant in Antwerp (1967), while Prayon expanded its activities to the municipality of Puurs (1963), along the Rupel River. All these companies imported phosphate from Morocco, Tunisia, Florida, South Africa, Russia, or Uganda.

As these industries grew, filling the air with toxic fumes, the waste piled up. For each ton of phosphoric acid produced, four to five tons of phosphogypsum were generated. In Belgium, in just over a century, no less than 70 million tons were dumped in old quarries, forested lands, or waterways. According to the Nuclear Energy Study Centre, 46 million tons were dumped in Flanders, including 10 million in the Scheldt River ⓘ. In Wallonia, there is no data on the dump sites’ location, which is concerning, since it is estimated that Prayon, the only active company in the Walloon region, produced 20 to 30 million tons of phosphogypsum.

Around the same time, in the province of Antwerp, a group of environmental activists, made up of local residents and ecological militants (ALR) ⓘ, formed in 1971 to ban the waste discharge from the Prayon-Puurs phosphoric acid factory. “The area was economically devastated by the collapse of the brick factories. The authorities then launched a plan to convert Rupel into a landfill, forgetting that people lived there. All kinds of waste were dumped : from household trash to asbestos, including phosphogypsum,” says Eddy Stuer, a prominent figure in the movement ⓘ.

All over the region ⓘ, abandoned clay quarries were filled with waste. Over nearly 30 years, Prayon dumped more than ten million tons of phosphogypsum there. Of the dozen landfill sites, only two were officially under its responsibility. For the others, “we can assume that the phosphogypsum came from Prayon, but these lands were never its property,” explains Boris Dehandschutter of the AFCN.

Protests, blockades, hunger strikes: all means were used to get the authorities to respond. King Baudouin visited Rupel in 1981 to learn about the situation. At that time, waste legislation was scarce, if not non-existent. The Flemish Public Waste Agency (Ovam) did not yet exist. It was under pressure from the ALR that Flanders adopted a decree on waste in 1981 and created Ovam, responsible for waste management and soil contamination.

While many companies have gone bankrupt, others, like Prayon, still active in Belgium, rely on the passing of time to make their legacy forgotten by future generations. “They put toxic waste in the ground, reforest it to give a natural appearance, making people believe that everything is beautiful and preserved, when that is not the case,” laments Frank Van Houtte, a resident and member of ALR ⓘ.

Invisible pollutants permeate the soil and contaminate water tables. For Dominique Kiekens, a political scientist (University of Antwerp) and member of ALR, “the problem with this pollution is that people were deliberately made to believe there wasn’t really a problem. This has created a public very tolerant of this pollution, and of the fact they are being exposed to it daily.”

Once turned into parks or green spaces, or hidden beneath industrial or residential areas, this waste becomes invisible, contributing to a collective denial of the scale of the problem. “We need to pass on the memory of this chemical waste for 2,500 to 3,000 years. The biggest danger of these waste heaps is that they will be forgotten. That’s what state services and those responsible for this waste hope for,” highlights Jacky Bonnemains, founder of the association Robin des Bois.

Phosphate fertilizers are just one type of chemical fertilizer widely used by the agricultural sector, alongside nitrogen and potassium fertilizers. While their production contaminates the land and its inhabitants, putting this fertilizer on fields contributes to the dissemination of industrial pollutants in the environment. Microorganisms are affected, water bodies become contaminated, and the excess nutrients (nitrogen and phosphate) in aquatic environments lead to the proliferation of algae.

Spain, the leading producer of fruit and vegetables in the European Union, is a good illustration of this. Since the 1960s, agriculture has intensified in the south of the country. A large part of the land is now covered by plastic greenhouses. In these polythene tunnels, peppers, tomatoes, lettuces, and strawberries are grown using a mixture of nitrates and phosphates, those notorious “mineral fertilizers”.

Although these substances initially promote plant growth and increase yields, in the long term they end up deteriorating soil structure. The soil becomes acidified, and heavy metals such as cadmium and uranium accumulate, slowing down microbial activity essential for the regeneration of organic matter.

Aware of this impact, some agricultural companies are reacting accordingly. “We don’t own the land; we rent it. It’s better for us because after about ten years, it’s as if the soil is tired, sick. Fertilizers are no longer enough. So we end up looking for other land.” says the commercial director of a company, on his way to his artichoke fields.

Today, 30% of Spain’s agricultural land, or 70,000 km² — equivalent to an area twice the size of Belgium — is severely degraded by pesticides and heavy metals, among other things. Among European countries, Italy and France are not far behind, both with, respectively, 23% and 7% of their agricultural land severely or very severely degraded. Overall, 31% of Europe’s agricultural soil is polluted by heavy metals, and 52% by pesticides ⓘ.

On the ground, this reality is already quite visible. José Garcia Cuevas, spokesperson for the Andalusian Union of Agricultural Workers (SOC-SAT), describes a dramatic situation in the region. “The land has become nothing other than desert. In some cases, the situation has become irreversible. The soil has been treated so heavily with fertilizers and chemicals that it’s destroyed.” he laments. “In Granada, they tried to restore an area devastated by greenhouses, plastic, and chemicals. But they quickly discovered that the soil was completely contaminated. Almost all of the soil had to be removed.”

Too many greenhouses, monoculture, tillage, fertilizers, pesticides. Since 1950, the proportion of organic matter in agricultural soil has halved. This loss is especially concerning as it leads to the disappearance of soil life ⓘ and compromises the soil’s ability to regenerate. The soil can no longer perform its functions (such as carbon -CO₂- capture / mineralization, and water retention), which increases the risks of erosion and drought. Moreover, nutrients are no longer retained by the soil and are leached into groundwater, causing eutrophication issues. This phenomenon threatens aquatic ecosystems.

In contrast to air quality, no global mechanism has yet been established to assess and monitor the state of soil degradation. But even in the absence of global data, the European Environment Agency (EEA) estimates that “soil degradation is not well monitored, and often hidden, but is widespread and diverse.”

This degradation, however, has direct consequences on land fertility, agricultural yields, and the nutritional quality of food. “Over the last 70 years, the level of many minerals and nutritious elements in almost every kind of food has fallen between 10 and 100 percent,” writes the European Commission ⓘ. As a result, we would need to consume 2 to 5 times as much food to obtain the same amount of minerals and trace elements as in 1940. In addition, there are health risks associated with exposure to heavy metals absorbed by plants, such as cadmium and uranium.