A Tunisian phosphate plant that sickens children so US, Europe can get fertilizer

Dalila grew up in the Tunisian coastal city of Gabès and is accustomed to the heavy, acrid smell from the state-owned phosphate processing plant about a 10-minute walk from her home.

On days when noxious fumes fill the air, Dalila rushes to tightly shut the windows and tells her children to hurry indoors. She washes them, believing it lessens harmful effects from chemicals. Emissions can last all day. Residents may get little or no advance warning.

But one day in September 2025, children were at school when gases spread. Some students fell to the ground, complaining they had difficulty breathing. Others said they felt like they were suffocating.

Dalila’s daughter said she felt like she was choking. Dalila rushed her to a government-run hospital. When she asked about test results or the type of substances that may have caused her difficulty breathing, Dalila said she did not get clear answers.

The incident sickening the schoolchildren helped spark mass protests in the streets of Gabès, with people waving banners that read “Stop Pollution” and “Move The Plant.” It is not the first time that residents have protested water and air pollution from the factory.

Dalila feels that she and others in Gabès are being ignored. They are far from alone. Fishermen report coastal waters were once abundant with fish, but, now, their nets come up empty. Scientific studies provide evidence that environmental damage poses a danger to the health of those living nearby.

Phosphate is a major industry in Tunisia, sought around the world as a key ingredient to make fertilizer for farms. Annual exports are worth hundreds of millions of dollars a year and account for roughly 4% of the nation’s gross domestic product, according to a 2026 assessment by the African Development Bank. Trade records show major customers are India, the European Union, and the United States — including agriculture giants EuroChem North America Corp. and Koch Fertilizer LLC.

There are several phosphate-based fertilizer factories in Gabès. The leading plant is operated by the state-owned giant Groupe Chimique Tunisien S.A. (GCT).

To foster Tunisia’s fertilizer industry, the European Investment Bank agreed to lend GCT about 55 million euros ($84.6 million) in 2008 to make improvements at the company’s facilities across Tunisia, including cutting toxic emissions, reducing health risks and improving living conditions.

The work was supposed to include the factory in Gabès.

But progress elsewhere in the country went poorly. There were “significant” delays, according to the bank, which then canceled the remaining 20 million euros ($30.8 million) of the loan that was supposed to include work in Gabès.

Residents like Dalila did not see any of the promised improvements.

“We want nothing more than our children’s right to life. We don’t want them to experience the same devastation we have lived through,” she says.

She pauses for a moment, then looks at her daughter and asks a question that has troubled her for years: “What is our fate? What will our lives be like in the future? Will the children of Gabès continue to breathe fear instead of air?”

Dalila lives in an apartment building around 4 kilometers (2.5 miles) from the factory, one of Tunisia’s largest phosphate processing plants.

Others live even closer to the processing plant — closer than recommended by world health authorities. The neighborhoods of Shat al-Salam and Boushousha are both located well within the 2 km (1.2 mi) buffer zone recommended by the International Labour Organization and the World Health Organization as a safe distance from smokestacks.

The Tunisian government also recommended that no one reside within 5 km (3.1 mi) of the factory.

To residents, relocating their homes is not acceptable. Shat al-Salam, where Dalila lives, has more than 16,000 people, according to the latest official statistics in 2014. Instead, they want the government to move the processing plant.

The government pledged in 2017 to do just that — to relocate the fertilizer operation. But that has not happened. Instead, the government has continued to invest in the current facility.

Residents want the fertilizer factory moved to an unpopulated area outside their city, which traces its roots back more than 2,000 years, to the ancient empire of Carthage. The city of Gabès now has more than 100,000 people, according to Tunisia’s official statistics.

The fertilizer factory has pledged to time its emissions at night and when children are not in school, but that does not always happen. The Stop Pollution protesters said the releases can sometimes come without warning — with no sirens or radio alerts — and there are few assurances that keeping apartment windows tightly closed can keep out toxic fumes. When there are toxic releases, there may be radio warnings to give residents time to go indoors, but those announcements are not always issued.

Tunisian health authorities declined to provide health data on respiratory conditions and other illnesses related to the toxic air releases. Doctors contacted by reporters declined to speak publicly, citing a fear of reprisals.

Pollution impacts nearby waterways

Along with air pollution, wastewater can be observed being discharged directly into the sea from the factory at Ghannouch Beach. Moustafa, a fisherman near Gabès, said the plant’s water effluent is damaging nearby waters.

“I’m forced to sail long distances to look for fish in areas with less pollution, but most of the time I come back with empty nets,” he said. “There used to be over 3,000 fishermen, but today, there are only a few dozen, as the sea is no longer a source of livelihood in their region due to rising pollution levels.”

Both Dalila and Moustafa were interviewed as part of an examination by Mongabay and Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) into pollution from the phosphate factory that supplies fertilizers for farms around the world.

They asked that their real names not be published, because they fear reprisals for talking with journalists. Events in Tunisia in recent years support their concerns. Tunisia has become increasingly restrictive, according to the Brookings Institute, the Atlantic Council, and other Washington, D.C.-based think tanks that have traced the country’s growing authoritarianism since the heady days of the Arab Spring demonstrations in 2011.

What do scientific studies say?

Scientific studies support what Dalila, Moustafa and other residents say the pollution is doing to their community.

A 2026 study published in the Journal of Hazardous Materials described conditions around open-air waste disposal sites operated by GCT as posing “very high ecological risk” and potentially serious health dangers for nearby residents. Analyzing bentogypsum, an industrial waste produced during phosphate processing, they found dangerous concentrations of toxic contaminants, particularly cadmium, a heavy metal found naturally in phosphate rock.

The study said the waste piles, located less than 500 meters (1,640 feet) from residential neighborhoods, were vulnerable to wind erosion, flooding, and leakage into groundwater used by nearby communities for agriculture and drinking water. And that the protective liner system, put into place when the site was planned as a temporary measure, appears to be deteriorating.

A 2025 study published in the journal Environmental Monitoring and Assessment found that schoolchildren living in Gabès had significantly higher levels of cadmium and lead in their blood and urine than children in less polluted areas. Researchers concluded that the contamination likely came primarily from airborne industrial pollution rather than from food, citing phosphate processing emissions and particulate pollution surrounding the industrial zone.

The researchers reported: “The chronic exposure to heavy metals detected in children from the exposed area points to air pollution as the primary risk factor.”

One of the study’s most striking findings is that more than half of the industrial facilities mapped in the region either lacked pollution-control equipment or had systems that were nonfunctional.

The journal Marine Pollution Bulletin reported in 2023 that seagrass in the Gulf of Gabès has undergone drastic changes due to pollution from the fertilizer plant, and the coastal environment is at risk of being so badly damaged, it may not recover.

The authors wrote, “Since antiquity, the Gulf of Gabès has been considered a biodiversity hotspot and a fish and shellfish nursery for the eastern Mediterranean basin because of the occurrence of Posidonia meadows,” the seagrass along the coast.

The report was clear about what to blame. “Since the 70’s, >500 million t[ons] of wet toxic phosphogypsum discharges from a fertilizer industrial complex have led to the gradual loss of ∼90 % of its initial surface [of seagrass]. This drastic shrinkage is accompanied by significant value losses.”

The study reported the drastic loss of seagrass caused severe damage to fisheries. The area is also less able to absorb carbon. It estimated the economic toll in 2014 alone was valued at about 105 million euros ($73 million at the time).

The study’s authors, from laboratories, universities and a wildlife center across France, Tunisia and Saudi Arabia, concluded: “Without actions to reduce negative production externalities caused by the fertilizer industry in the Gulf of Gabès it would not be possible to recover Posidonia ecosystems in this region leading to further economic, ecologic, and cultural losses.”

A separate study published in 2025 by research center Géosciences Environnement Toulouse found contamination along the coast. “The central part of the Gulf of Gabès (SE Tunisia) is one of the most chemically and radioactively polluted sites in the Mediterranean,” the scientist conducting the study reported.

He pointed to uranium and thorium, radioactive elements discharged from the processing plant, “dumped untreated in the Gabès sea since 1972 in the form of gypsum slurry.”

The European Space Agency’s Sentinel-5 satellites, using spectrometers to measure infrared and ultraviolet light bands, further show air pollution in the Gabès area.

An analysis by Mongabay and ARIJ suggested that the air in the vicinity of the Gabès processing plant far exceeded WHO-recommended concentrations for sulfur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide and carbon monoxide.

The results for 2025 showed that the average concentration of sulfur dioxide was about 331.5 µg/m³, which exceeded the World Health Organization’s standard of 40 µg/m³. The average nitrogen dioxide concentration was approximately 46.6 µg/m³, surpassing the WHO-recommended guidelines of 10 µg/m³. The average carbon monoxide concentration was about 35.9 mg/m³, nine times the WHO standard (4 mg/m³).

Spectrometers from Sentinel-5 may be imprecise, with a margin of error of up to 50% for some of the chemicals analyzed, according to scientific studies. Still, researchers say the satellite’s work is a valuable indicator.

In July 2025, consultants hired by the African Development Bank found similar levels of air pollution.

The Tunisian Groupement I2E/IHE, the partnership formed by I2E, an environmental engineering firm, and IHE, Institut des Hautes Études, a private university, delivered an environmental and social compliance audit commissioned by the African Development Bank. The report also evaluated a $110 million loan by the African Development Bank, approved in January 2026, to finance environmental modernizations and upgrades to the Tunisian Chemical Group’s facilities.

Global demand for Tunisian fertilizer

The Gabès fertilizer factory was built in 1972 and is owned and operated by the government-owned GCT. It processes phosphate and also includes natural gas storage facilities.

The phosphate processed in Gabès originates in the Gafsa mining basin in southwestern Tunisia. Phosphate rock is extracted by the state-owned mining concern Compagnie des Phosphates de Gafsa (CPG) and then transported by rail to several coastal industrial facilities.

At these sites, including Gabès, the material is processed by GCT. One of the main processing stages involves treating phosphate rock with sulfuric acid to produce phosphoric acid. This phosphoric acid is then used, often alongside ammonia, to manufacture fertilizers such as diammonium phosphate. The factories in Gabès and nearby Sfax, another port city on the Gulf of Gabès, 160 kilometers north, further process the materials as well for export-grade fertilizers sold to international agricultural markets.

Phosphate has been a key component of Tunisia’s economy since its discovery in 1896. The processing plant in Gabès is a crucial part. According to the U.S. Geological Survey, which assesses metals and mineral industries around the globe, Tunisia has one of the world’s largest phosphate reserves. While far dwarfed by neighboring Morocco, Tunisia has approximately 2.5 billion tons, accounting for more than 3% of global reserves. In 2024, Tunisia’s phosphate rock production reached approximately 3.3 million tons.

Tunisian phosphate-related products are desired by agricultural companies in India, Europe, and the U.S.

Tunisia’s exports of phosphoric acid — used in fertilizers — reached $212 million in 2024, according to UN trade data.

To foster Tunisia’s fertilizer industry, development banks in Europe and Africa have invested in the Middle Eastern nation’s mining operations and factories.

In 2008, the European Investment Bank issued its 55 million euros ($84.6 million) that was supposed to include improving GCT operations in Gabès.

The work elsewhere in Tunisia went poorly, according to the bank. It said there were “significant implementation delays.” The bank told Mongabay in a written statement that, because of “insufficient implementation progress,” it canceled the remaining 20 million euros ($30.8 million) of the loan, which was supposed to include improvements in Gabès.

In the end, the project’s “technical objectives were only partially achieved,” according to the bank.

In 2016, the same bank announced it would issue a 19 million euro ($21 million at the time) loan to reduce environmental impacts, particularly greenhouse gas emissions, while establishing an environmental monitoring system for all production sites. This project also received an additional 10 million euros ($11 million at the time) from the European Commission.

The EIB said that loan was canceled and no money was disbursed. It did not give a reason for why it ended the loan.

The European Investment Bank’s lending was not the only international financing for Tunisia to improve operations. The African Development Bank’s $110 million loan approved earlier this year was to finance environmental modernizations and upgrades to the Tunisian Chemical Group’s facilities.

Despite the repeated investments, accusations have continued that toxic plumes from the Gabès processing plant have sickened residents. In December 2019, the Tunisian Forum for Economic and Social Rights said residents in the Gabès’s Shat al-Salam neighborhood had been exposed to toxic gases emitted by the fertilizer facility. It attributed the toxic releases to “the obsolescence and deterioration of industrial facilities and the total absence of environmental and health safety.”

The central reason for foreign investment in Tunisia’s phosphate operations is that phosphate enriched fertilizers provide nitrogen prized for productive farmland.

Although the U.S. produces most of its phosphate-based fertilizers domestically, it has increasingly relied on imports in recent years. The industry is maturing, and some mines located in Florida, Idaho, North Carolina and Utah are becoming depleted. While new mines were recently approved, including in Idaho to replace a dwindling reserve, US regulations and public scrutiny slow down the process.

Shipping records show EuroChem and Koch have ranked in recent years among the top U.S. importers of phosphate fertilizers from Tunisia.

Commercial shipping records document that EuroChem’s North American subsidiary got at least five shipments between 2021 and 2023 valued at more than $70 million, and Koch Fertilizer received at least six shipments in 2023 and 2024 valued at $58 million. Combined, they imported more 250,000 tons of monoammonium phosphate and diammonium phosphate.

A federal lawsuit filed in December 2025 in the U.S. against EuroChem’s North American subsidiary offers a glimpse into the largely invisible regulatory system governing the flow of chemicals into the U.S.

The civil suit, brought under the U.S. federal Toxic Substances Control Act by the Center for Environmental Health, accused EuroChem of failing to disclose to the federal Environmental Protection Agency that the company had imported massive amounts of phosphates from 2016 to 2019.

Under U.S. law at the time, companies were required to disclose phosphate-related shipments to the EPA under the agency’s Chemical Data Reporting program (CDR).

According to Robert Sussman, an attorney who represented the nonprofit in the case, the complaint alleged that EuroChem imported numerous chemicals without filing required reports, despite volumes that reached “millions, and in some cases billions, of pounds.”

The lawsuit did not accuse the company of causing pollution in the U.S. Instead, it focused on whether the regulator and the public had visibility into the scale of the imports. The complaint stated the company failed to disclose more than 800 million pounds of diammonium phosphate and 74 trillion pounds of monoammonium phosphate. The EPA uses the reporting data to decide which chemicals warrant closer scrutiny and to evaluate potential human exposure risks.

The case was settled in January 2026 after EuroChem agreed to file the missing reports with the EPA, according to the plaintiff’s attorney. Eurochem did not respond to requests for comment.

The lawsuit underscored what environmental advocates describe as weak federal enforcement of chemical disclosure laws. Sussman said the EPA has broad authority to bring similar cases and impose penalties, but rarely does.

U.S. President Donald Trump’s trade policies reshaped the country’s phosphate fertilizer market in ways that could have indirectly benefited Tunisian exporters. In 2020, the Trump administration imposed tariffs on phosphate fertilizer imports from Morocco and Russia after a complaint from The Mosaic Co., a Minnesota firm that argued foreign competitors were receiving unfair government subsidies. The duties, including roughly 20% tariffs on Moroccan fertilizers, reduced Moroccan shipments to the U.S. and tightened fertilizer supply.

The tariffs also created an opening for rival exporters, including Tunisia, whose phosphate products were not subject to the new duties. Export figures are not yet publicly available to document whether there have been changes in export levels.

The Tunisian companies did not respond to requests for comment. Koch Fertilizer and EuroChem did not respond to repeated attempts for comment about Tunisian phosphate in their supply chains, and connections with fertilizer factories that have damaged the local environment and sickened residents.

Back in Gabès, Marwan Tarjuman, who has been among those protesting the processing plant, said protests by residents will continue as long as the pollution causes breathing illnesses and other diseases.

Dalila, whose daughter was hospitalized because fumes from the factory made breathing so difficult, understands that the phosphate industry is vital for the country’s economy.

But she asked in a quiet voice, “Must that come at the expense of people’s health and children’s lives?”

This investigation is a collaboration with Mongabay.