Jon Snow's Last Doc Exposes African Toxic Spill
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- Jon Snow, the 78-year-old former Channel 4 news anchor, stars in the hour-long documentary "Jon Snow: A Last Big Story," filmed after his Alzheimer's diagnosis, with clinical footage showing him unable to recall the date at a doctor's appointment or three test words minutes after being told them
- Visiting family in Zambia with his wife, neuroscientist Dr Precious Lunga, Snow learned of a dam collapse at the copper mine of Sino-Metals Leach Zambia that spilled 1.5 million tonnes of toxic waste — including uranium, arsenic, and cyanide — into surrounding lands and waterways
- The disaster was later characterized as the worst environmental catastrophe in Africa for 30 years, according to a report Snow's team obtained and leaked to international news outlets, who picked up the story
- Snow traveled downriver with environmental activists Chepa Mahata and Sarah Sakani, and alongside his old editor Ben de Pear attended a community meeting with lawyer Brigadier Siachitema that was broken up by police and a mining company representative
- The documentary intercuts Snow's present-day investigation with archival footage of his reporting from El Salvador, post-9/11 Manhattan, and Bhopal, and his interviews with Mandela, Reagan, and Gorbachev
Why it matters: Snow's documentary pulls double duty — giving a legendary British journalist a dignified on-screen farewell as Alzheimer's erodes his memory, and breaking the story of a 1.5-million-tonne toxic spill at a Chinese-owned Zambian copper mine that his team leaked to international outlets, described as Africa's worst environmental disaster in 30 years.
