Nickel Boom in Indonesia Brings Environmental Concerns and Health Impacts
Indonesia's Industrial Boom Poisons Nearby Villages with Toxic Air
Nickel is a vital part of everyday life - used in stainless steel and some electric vehicle batteries. Much of the world's supply comes from Indonesia, which is experiencing a nickel boom, along with growing concerns about environmental damage and public health. NPR's Above The Fray fellow Katerina Barton reports from Sulawesi, where communities are living with the effects.
Indonesia's Morowali Industrial Park is the country's largest nickel processing complex. It's a maze of ports, coal plants, steelworks and smelters. It sprawls across an area nearly the size of Manhattan. Wherever you go here, there's a constant hum of manufacturing.
Since 2013, the Industrial Park, also called IMIP, has grown, creating jobs. But growing with it is the air pollution. It was built around existing villages, like this one, called Kurisa. The hum is quieter in the villages, but the smog remains.
It almost looks like there's a forest fire with how thick the smog is. I can definitely tell it's harder to breathe here. We're all wearing masks.
In the village, local producer Adi Renaldi and I walk down a wooden pathway. Children run around playing while their mothers sit in the shade outside of their houses, trying to keep cool from the Indonesian heat. This is where I meet one of the mothers, Putri. She's just made herself lunch.
Putri is 21, and like many Indonesians, she just has one name. She tells us, last week, she had to go to the local clinic.
She was out of breath, and her chest hurt. The doctor told her it was... from the pollution here.
While we're talking, Putri's 4-year-old daughter, Kiana, climbs into her lap. Kiana also had to go to the clinic with her mother.
Is her daughter still sick?
Still coughing.
Her mother says almost everyone in the village gets sick at some point. In 2024, a local university tested the air quality in this area. They found that the average daily concentration of toxic particles exceeded the country's safety standards. These tiny particles can enter deep into the lungs and can cause lasting health impacts like lung cancer. Cases of acute respiratory infection, like what Putri had, are drastically rising at the local clinic in this district. These range from asthma attacks or a common cold to more serious illnesses like bronchitis or pneumonia.
Dr. Wirya Sastra Amran has been treating these cases. We meet him at the region's only hospital. Those who need more care than the public clinic can offer travel here, two hours from the industrial park. Wirya is the only lung doctor at the hospital. Since he moved here in 2019...
He's seen a dramatic increase in cases of lung infections in the district of Bahodopi, where the industrial park, IMIP, is located.
NPR reached out to IMIP multiple times for comment, but they have not responded.
When I ask him how he feels about treating patients here, he takes off his glasses and rubs his eyes.
He says, sometimes he wants to say, don't live there, but he can't. He knows some people just don't have that option.
Instead, he tells patients, be smart. Take care of your health, and most importantly, wear a mask.
Back in Bahodopi, Putri, the mother who was recently ill, says she and her husband are trying to save to move.
But she says, "there's no money now, so we just have to stay here."
