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DIAMONDS BLOODY DIAMONDS
Its an old subject that needs attention.
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Do you Know Whats in Your cellphone?
Its called Columbite-tantalite - coltan for short - one of the world's most sought-after materials. Refine coltan and you get a highly heat-resistant metal powder called tantalum. It sells for $100 a pound, and it's becoming increasingly vital to modern life.
For the high-tech industry, tantalum is magic dust, a key component in everything from mobile phones made by Nokia (NOK) and Ericsson and computer chips from Intel (INTC) to Sony (SNE) stereos and VCRs.
Selling coltan is not illegal. Most of the worldwide tantalum supply - valued at as much as $6 billion a year - comes from legitimate mining operations in Australia, Canada and Brazil.
But as demand for tantalum took off with the boom of high-tech products in recent years, a new, more sinister market began flourishing in the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Child Soldiers, Forced slave labor, these warring rebel groups are exploiting coltan mining to help finance a bloody civil war.
The mining by the rebels is also causing environmental destruction. In particular, endangered gorilla populations are being massacred or driven out of their natural habitat as the miners illegally plunder the ore-rich lands of the Congo's protected national parks.
The market for the metal is based on secretive and convoluted trade links subject to few international regulations, and the ore is not sold on regulated metals exchanges.
The U.N. report does not directly blame computer manufacturers and mobile phone makers for the bloody trade, citing instead the companies trading minerals as "the engine of the conflict in the DRC." But the high-tech industry's demand for tantalum clearly has fueled an increase in coltan mining worldwide - including in the Congo region. After all, the trading companies sell coltan to processing companies, which in turn sell to tantalum capacitor manufacturers - whose clients are none other than high-tech companies such as Ericsson, Intel and Nokia.
These companies deny any knowledge that tantalum originating in the Congo is used in their products. That's not surprising, considering how murky the supply chain out of the Congo is and how complicated the global trade in tantalum gets.
The reality is that there's little way to prove that the tantalum used in our cell phones and laptops is or is not from the Congo.
Guns, Money and Cell Phones
By Kristi Essick Its called Columbite-tantalite - coltan for short - one of the world's most sought-after materials. Refine coltan and you get a h... more -
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