‘I drank the water and ate the fish. We all did. The acid has damaged me permanently’

In the villages near Africa's biggest copper mine, you can smell and taste the pollution. As a legal battle against metals giant Vedanta/KCM reaches London, villagers in Chingola, Zambia, tell of blighted lives and a looming catastrophe

You can't see the old Chingola copper mine, with its smelter and refinery, from the village of Shimulala. It's miles away, beyond 300ft-high hills of waste tailings, the leach plant, the main pollution control dam and the 1,600ft-deep open pit that is one of Africa's largest holes.

But you can smell and taste the pollution from the biggest copper mine in Africa. If you pump a glass of water from the borehole outside the little church in Shimulala, you will see it is bright yellow, smells of sulphur and tastes vile.

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