Notable case, Copșa Mică, Sibiu, Romania
Copșa Mică
A small Transylvanian town with two factories: a carbon black plant that for decades blackened houses, trees and animals, and a zinc and lead smelter that contaminated more than twenty thousand hectares of soil with metals.
At a glance
- Status
- Not addressed
- Area
- 21,875 ha on land1
- Activity
- 1935–2009
- Media
- soil, air, living organisms
- Kind of site
- smelter, chemical works
- Area. Documented polluted area: 18,630 ha of farmland and 3,245 ha of forest (Wikipedia entry on the works, read from a search extract). A 2005 survey gives 22,565 ha where at least one metal exceeds the alert threshold for sensitive land use.
Contaminants
Status
Not addressed
Carbosin closed in 1993 and the Sometra smelter suspended production in 2009. Sampling of permanent meadows in 2023–2024 still finds on average 5.5 mg/kg of cadmium and 201 mg/kg of lead in soil, above Romania's intervention thresholds for sensitive land use (Oprea et al. 2025).
Story
Carbosin, founded in 1935, made carbon black from methane: in 1989 it still turned out 24,400 tonnes. Its black dust covered a strip more than 20 km long and 5–6 km wide. Sometra, founded in 1939 and nationalised in 1948, smelted zinc and lead: in 1989 it produced 29,840 tonnes of zinc and 23,519 of electrolytic lead, plus sulphuric acid and cadmium.
Forest damage grew from 100 hectares in 1961 to nearly 8,000 in 1978 and over 30,000 in 1988. Carbosin closed in 1993. Sometra was privatised in 1998 and sold to Greece's Mytilineos; in 2009 production was suspended and 80% of the workforce, more than 700 people, was laid off.
The metals remain in the soil. Romanian agronomists keep measuring their transfer to meadow plants such as red fescue, which enter livestock feed.
Timeline
- 1935Carbosin (carbon black) is founded.
- 1939Sometra (zinc and lead) is founded.
- 1993Carbosin closes.
- 1998Sometra is privatised and passes to Mytilineos.
- 2009Sometra suspends production.
Health
In 1977, 70 residents were found with excessive blood lead, more than 400 in 1990; in 1990 over half of Sometra's employees were above normal and 96% of children aged 2 to 14 had chronic bronchitis. The Wikipedia entry on the town gives a life expectancy nine years below the Romanian average.
From the literature
Species that acted on one of this site's contaminants in at least one study. The list is automatic and takes no account of this site's soil, concentrations or climate.
Plants
- Agrostis capillarisCommon bentEvidence: field
- Arabidopsis halleriHaller's rockcressEvidence: field
- Cannabis sativaIndustrial hempEvidence: field
- Festuca rubraRed fescueEvidence: field
- Noccaea caerulescensAlpine pennycressEvidence: field
- Populus albaWhite poplarEvidence: field
Fungi
- Rhizophagus irregularisEvidence: greenhouse
- Paxillus involutusBrown roll-rimEvidence: greenhouse
- Aspergillus nigerBlack mouldEvidence: laboratory
- Suillus luteusSlippery jackEvidence: laboratory
- Agaricus bisporusButton mushroomEvidence: laboratory
- Mucor circinelloidesEvidence: laboratory
The rest are on the contaminant pages.
Nearby
Sources
- Copșa Mică works, Wikipedia, 2026
- Copșa Mică, Wikipedia, 2026
- Oprea B.Ș. et al. Bioaccumulation of cadmium, lead, zinc and copper in red fescue (Festuca rubra L.) grown in polluted meadows in Copșa Mică. Scientific Papers Series E, Land Reclamation XIV, USAMV București, 2025
Draft compiled from public sources, not yet reviewed.