By Tim Cocks
From the moment Mpho Putsoenyane’s daughter Hlompho was born in Zamdela, a South African township beside the smokestacks and gas flares of Sasol’s oldest coal-to-liquid refinery, the baby struggled to breathe.
Last year, when she was four months old, she turned purple and started gasping. Her parents rushed the baby to hospital, where medics only just revived her heart with a defibrillator, Putsoenyane recalls.
“We were terrified,” she told Reuters at her brick bungalow, pausing to wipe away tears. “We thought she was going to die.”
Sasolburg, as the petrochemical giant’s refinery town north of Zamdela is called, has been identified by government officials as one of several areas of South Africa in urgent need of cutting harmful air pollution from burning coal.
It also encapsulates a dilemma facing many coal-dependent nations: how to reduce emissions of toxic air pollutants without hurting strategic industries or killing low-skilled
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