Editor's note: The new film,
"Blood Diamond," starring Leonardo DiCaprio has renewed interest in so-called "conflict" or "blood" diamonds. "Conflict diamonds" refer to proceeds from such diamonds that finance war, and the consequence of "blood diamonds" are the lives of the miners who suffer from tuberculosis, asbestosis, silicosis, all otherwise known as "AIDS."
In
"Glitter and Greed" (published by Disinformation, New York, 2003), author and investigative journalist Janine Roberts uncovers the dirty secrets about diamond mining in South Africa. According to Ms. Roberts, even diamonds bearing the supposedly clean "Kimberly" certification are tainted by blood and conflict. Following is a comprehensive and life-changing introduction - just written to coincide with the release of the film, "Blood Diamond."
Blood in the stones: The real blood diamonds: TB, silicosis, asbestosis, and De BeersBy Janine Roberts15th
December 2006
The Kimberley Process is supposed to guarantee the diamonds we buy are morally clean, not associated with any foul deed, or so we have all understood it.
But, according to the US General Accounting Office these guarantees are worthless illusions. It reported in September 2006 that most parcels of diamonds are not even inspected. And moreover, as I recently learnt in South Africa, millions of diamonds sold to us as clean are produced in a cheapskate way that wrecks the lungs of the men mining them; causing incurable misery and death.
As I write, the mining industry, led by De Beers, is deeply concerned about the soon-to-be-released Leonardo Dicaprio movie "Blood Diamond". Emails and faxes about it are flying agitatedly around De Beers’ offices. They have organized among their employees a campaign called “Project Horizon” to combat the movie’s message. But this film deals only with diamonds sold to support former African wars – something done since Cecil Rhodes, the founder of De Beers, sold them to fight the Boers. They give far less attention to...continuing scandals attached to the diamonds they sell to us as utterly clean.
Some years ago I was told by a shop steward at Finsch, a giant De Beers mine in South Africa; “The diamonds we mine are sitting in asbestos. We are ill protected with inadequate masks. The ventilation is always breaking down. We are frequently covered in asbestos dust.” This shocked and horrified me. If this were true, it could give a lingering death to many. But at the time I found De Beers’ doctors kept a tight hold on the miners’ health records, so I could not verify this most serious allegation.
On the contrary, I found De Beers completely denied that asbestos was a problem in its mines. In a recent statement it said: “Despite the inherent risk and hazards of the mining industry, the diamond mining sector remains one of the safest in terms of occupational disease rates. The key areas of concern are well under control; lung diseases [are] very rare. … Diseases due to respirable air-borne dust such as silicosis, asbestosis and chemical inhalation remain very rare.”
It also stated: “Cardio-pulmonary tuberculosis [is] well below community rate - this is not a dust-associated disease in the diamond mining industry.”[i] This claim is extraordinary. Dust-related silicosis and TB are horrifically epidemic in other South African mines. From what it says, diamond mining is surprisingly and uniquely safe,
Although I had doubts about asbestos, I had for a long time accepted their assurances about TB and silicosis. They were thus not mentioned in the first edition of this book. I was glad these diseases were not present in their mines. TB consumes the bodies of its victims and was thus once called “consumption.”
But then in late 2006, while helping make a film about diamonds in South Africa, I interviewed Sandy Murray, the 28-year-old mother of two little girls aged 7 and 5, She had worked with her husband at the De Beers’ Koffiefontein Diamond Mine from 1996 to 2005, at first as a mine secretary and then, from 2001 to 20005, as a Health and Safety Officer.
When we met, she had just recovered from having part of one of her lungs removed and from the shock of learning her lungs are permanently scarred and gravely weakened from mine dust and pulmonary TB. But she was very welcoming and acted as if she had no disabilities. Only when pushed did she admit; “I can no longer pick up and bathe the children. I cannot even change the duvet on our bed.”
Her diagnosis had been a total shock. It takes years for such illnesses to develop, and yet every year at the mine she had the mandatory chest x-ray and lung capacity test designed to pick up the first sign of lung damage while it is easy to treat – and “every year I was told I was clear.”
With hindsight, she now remembers she frequently had flu-like symptoms that would not go away, and that she started to feel increasingly weak. But she did not get the cough that often indicates silicosis, nor had she coughed up blood as often happens with TB. In early 2005 she was diagnosed with pneumonia – but still her now critical lung damage was not picked up.
But in 2005 she moved to a new job at De Beers Head Office in Johannesburg and had another medical check up. “This was on a Thursday. On Friday they told me I had TB and on Monday I was rushed into hospital to have part of my lungs removed.”
Her x-rays had revealed large scars and other damage from mine dust, and that her lung capacity had shrunk. It seemed the cuts had left her lungs open to infection from TB.
She told me how astonished she was at her critical diagnosis – for it is generally said that white miners do not get TB. She explained; “TB is a shameful disease that no white wants to admit to.” It is generally thought to only infect impoverished blacks. “When I went to a hospital clinic, I was the only white among 200 blacks.”
But when she gathered her courage to tell what had happened, one by one close white friends in the mining industry confessed what they had long kept hidden even from her, that they too had TB in the family. (I have since found among South African gold miners 18.8% of black workers had silicosis – and 17.6% of white.[ii] )
She then sought access to her medical records for she wanted to know how long she had carried TB, worried that she might have infected others.
Her records revealed her lungs were perfect in 2001 – with a lung capacity test result of 102%. But she was shocked to find in 2002, a year after she took up her post as a Health and Safety Officer and started going underground, her x-rays showed clear damage – and during the next three years they had revealed more and more damage.
Thinking back, she remembers how the De Beers’ doctor put her x-rays away with no more than a casual glance. It has since been discovered, I was told, that De Beers did not employ qualified radiographers.
When she looked at her lung capacity test results, the evidence was even clearer. Her air capacity “was down to 89% in 2002. In 2004 it dropped to just 73%, and in 2005 to only 64%.” She added: “I also lost weight. I was 70 kg but dropped to 49kg.” She is now only about 54kg. The evidence was stark clear – if anyone had looked. These were the unmistakable symptoms of major lung disease. If these had been noted when they first became obvious in 2002, she could have been medically treated with success, removed from further danger, would not have needed an operation and would still have her lungs intact.
She will now never recover what she has lost. Her remaining lungs are very damaged. She simply cannot absorb the oxygen she needs. Yet she is only 28. When she gets older, it may well get much harder. She remains highly vulnerable. With her permanent lung damage she will not get a job at another mine.
She was very surprised at how little exposure to diamond mine dust it had taken to make her so dangerously ill. “I only went underground twice a week to check health and safety matters. Only once a week did I go down as far as the 52nd level (about 600 feet down) to where the train dumped the ore for the crusher.”
But the latter level was extremely dusty. A senior contact at the Koffiefontein mine told me the dust extractor installed on that level was “constantly getting its filters blocked and breaking down.” This would cause the high peak dust exposure that can be the critical element in lung disease.
Sandy asked me: “But what about the black mineworkers? They went underground for much longer than me and for 5 days a week. If the company doctor did not look at my x-rays, those of a white woman, he was scarcely likely to look carefully at their x-rays.”
I would go afterwards down to Koffiefontein to research the extent of lung damage there by going house to house. I found one or two out of every five homes contained a black mineworker with damaged lungs.
She also told me: “When I changed my job within De Beers to come to Johannesburg, I lost all my medical benefits. I had to pay myself for the operation to remove the scar from my back and side and to help repair the muscle. It cost me 80,000 Rand ($7,500) for my medical treatment. De Beers did not help.” Only a small compensation payment of around $5,000 is due to her under apartheid-era legislation that protects mine owners from paying any kind of realistic compensation.
After listening to Sandy, it seemed to me most ironic that in the 2001 film Moulin Rouge the beautiful Satine, played by Nicole Kidman, sung in the last hours of her life “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” immediately before she coughed blood and died of consumption.
I went with Sandy Murray’s permission to meet the expert who looked at her x-rays, Professor Emeritus Tony Davies, one of South Africa’s most eminent specialists in occupational health, and asked him to comment on what he had found.
He said Sandy was very lucky to discover in time the great danger she was in. “Most mineworkers only get diagnosed with TB when it is too late, within a few months of their death, so they get no treatment at all. Many are not diagnosed even then, Their TB is only discovered at autopsy.” Retired mineworkers are rarely monitored, even though it is well known that silicosis or TB might take 15 years or more to develop. It is simply presumed that, as these diseases are fatal and have no cure, there is no value in monitoring their potential victims.
He told me that TB mostly starts in mineworkers after sharp particles from recently broken silica have severely damaged both their lungs and immune systems. Our immune system will try to remove any silica that gains entry to the lungs – and at low levels of dust it often succeeds. Macrophage cells in the lungs will engulf any dust that has made its way in. The lymphocyte T-cells also help to remove it. But if much dust accumulates in the lungs, it will eventually overwhelm the immune cells. The silica will cuts up and scar the lung cells, making them useless for absorbing oxygen. The lymph nodes supplying vital immune system cells are frequently damaged.. [iii] Many immune cells die, thus releasing the dust they have entrapped, allowing it to do yet more damage.
The victims of silicosis will face years of night sweats and chills, violent bloody fits of coughing, and the possible spread of infections to other parts of their bodies. Autopsies have revealed virtual sand beds in mineworkers’ lungs.
Tuberculosis mycobacteria might then infect the wounded lung cells, as happened with Sandy; “while the macrophages are engaged elsewhere combating the dust” as Professor Davies put it.
“How common are these bacteria?” I then asked. His answer was shocking: “By the time they are twenty years old, 100% of all South Africans have been exposed to TB.” But this did not mean they would all get the illness called TB. I learnt that TB is a rod-like bacterium that is normally harmless. It becomes dangerous to mineworkers mostly after mine dust has done its damage, when “the bacteria can multiply in the wounds the dust creates, gain immunity to drugs, and is very difficult to kill.”[iv]
This made me wonder what did most of the damage, the bacteria or the dust. I thus ask: “What is the clinical difference in patients between silicosis (in which no germ is involved) and TB?” He answered; “Very little. Except, there is more weight loss in TB.”
Freshly broken silica spilled out by drill bits is especially good at cutting into the lung cells. But sharp silica dust is not only in mines – it is in a wide range of industries and in many environments. However it is rarely as thick as in mine dust.
When I asked Professor Davies; “How common is TB in South Africa?” He replied: “Extremely” and explained emphatically how the other great epidemic, AIDS, “is masking” the true size of the TB “catastrophe.” His research revealed that silicosis/TB has been killing mineworkers from well before AIDS; that most mine drillers in Cornwall and the Transvaal were dying in 1902 of mine dust or TB before they reached their 37th birthday.[v]
The danger had not gone away. He angrily told me: “We have 1000% more TB cases than the USA. It has 4 cases of TB per 100,000. We have 500 cases per 100,000 – minimum – probably more like 750 new cases per 100,000 every year. Among our mineworkers it is far worse. They have from 4,000 to 5,000 cases per 100,000 every year.” When a group of migrant mine workers returning to Lesotho were tested, 60% had TB. “There are 330,000 new cases of TB a year [in South Africa] with some 7 million active cases.”
He explained why Sandy said TB was thought of as a disease of Blacks. This was because TB infection was more likely when our protective immune system is lowered by malnutrition, lack of sanitation and great poverty. He added angrily: “TB grows on a substrate of poor people.”
I asked about the new resistant varieties of TB, but he said this is of minor importance so far in view of the total size of the TB epidemic. Up until now only about 75 fatalities in South Africa have been attributed to the resistant bacteria.
I check the latest South African governmental health statistics, those for 2001. These list TB as the biggest killer, followed by pneumonia and then AIDS. The AIDS figures are not broken down into the “opportunistic infections” but TB is also by far the biggest killer in AIDS cases. TB is characterized by weight loss, as is AIDS. Silicosis also destroys immune cells. The end result is the same.
De Beers claims the cases of TB among its workers are solely due to AIDS. It stated: “A total of 28 cases were diagnosed during 2001 – 33 per cent up on the previous year. This was expected and parallels the Aids epidemic.” Apparently it thought imprudent sex is solely to blame – and not the mine dust. This made me think rather cynically that, as companies are not generally sued for viral infections, it was no wonder that De Beers blamed viruses than mine dust for the ills of its workers.
As Professor Davies had worked extensively with mineworkers, I asked him what he knew of the dust in diamond mines. He hesitated before answering but then said: “Two hundred retired diamond mineworkers from the De Beers Premier mine were tested – and every single one of them had clinical asbestosis.”
He added: “Some of might have had dual exposure by having also worked in asbestos mines, but, some firmly maintained that they had only worked at Premier.”
Professor Davies, a scientist who had specialized in diagnosing and fighting asbestosis, was confirming my worst suspicions. Asbestosis has a reputation of being even more deadly than silicosis.
His words made me check on the constituents of kimberlite, the greenish diamond bearing rock named after Kimberley, the town where De Beers was founded. I found it contains much serpentine, a silicate, sometimes over 30%. Olivine is also a major constituent – and is nearly identical chemically. It can turn into serpentine when weathered. I also found this serpentine is present in the mines in a fibrous crystalline form better known as crystolite or white asbestos.
I knew white asbestos is said to be less dangerous than blue or brown, for it does not linger in our cells for decades after a single exposure. But, what if workers are constantly exposed to it as might happen in diamond mines? I thus asked Professor Davies: “Is white asbestos very dangerous?” He answered emphatically; “It is a serious health hazard. It is like glass fiber.” It will easily penetrate lung cells. He reminded me that, although white asbestos was once commonly used to lag pipes and for buildings, today it is considered so dangerous that workers must remove it in full masks and protective suits.
Professor Davies was then asked by Neerad Redddy, the film producer working with me: “Could Sandy Murray have been exposed to white asbestos?” He answered: “Possibly.” When I looked later at her X- rays, they seemed to my non-expert eye very similar to those I had seen of asbestos victims – but there can be no clear distinction in x-rays when both silica and asbestos are present.
Since my meeting with Professor Davies, I have located other research that confirms the presence of asbestos dust in diamond mines. The South African Centre for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) produced in 2000 a paper entitled: The positive identification of asbestos and other fibers in the mining of kimberlite deposits. When they sought to evaluate how dangerous this was, they found the dust was so thick in the diamond mine they visited that they could not accurately count the numbers of fibers present![vi]
I have also found that, while other forms of asbestos are more likely to cause cancer, white asbestos does more damage to the immune system. “Chrysotile expressed a greater degree of cytotoxicity towards populations of macrophages.”[vii]
It was as the De Beers mineworkers at Finsch had reported; diamonds were sometimes found sitting in asbestos. De Beers had long been aware of this. They set up a laboratory to study the danger from asbestos fibers in their mines some twenty years ago in 1996.
