Metals and minerals
Tantalum
Where it comes from, what share of an industry’s output it is, and which wars the model links to it.
This page shows production, shares and inputs. It does not show a death toll per tonne. The shares below say what part of an industry’s output this material is, and what part of a war’s harm the model links to it. Multiplying either by a number of people gives a result, and no result is published until it comes from a recorded calculation, with a range and a confidence grade.
- Conflict mineral — Regulation (EU) 2017/821 — supply chain due diligence for importers of tin, tantalum, tungsten and gold from conflict-affected and high-risk areas.
- Critical raw material (EU list) — Regulation (EU) 2024/1252 (Critical Raw Materials Act), Annex II — the 34 critical raw materials. https://eur-lex.europa.eu/eli/reg/2024/1252/2024-05-03/eng
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The products it reaches
Each product whose list of materials contains Tantalum, with its deaths per item by the materials method and the part of that figure this material accounts for.
Scenario Economic-embedded, using FIGARO 2023.
| Product | Deaths per item |
|---|---|
| Printed circuit board assembly Part from here: 0.11% | 1.6 × 10⁻⁶ per item(0.60–3.4 × 10⁻⁶)LOWS-MAX · run 2259 · methodology v1.0 · data dv-20261007-44r |
| Smartphone Part from here: 0.11% | 3.0 × 10⁻⁸ per item(1.2–6.3 × 10⁻⁸)LOWS-MAX · run 2259 · methodology v1.0 · data dv-20261007-44r |
| Laptop Part from here: 0.11% | 5.4 × 10⁻⁷ per item(0.21–1.2 × 10⁻⁶)LOWS-MAX · run 2259 · methodology v1.0 · data dv-20261007-44r |
The figure is the product’s own, with its range. The share beside it is a middle estimate only: the calculation stores a range for each figure, not for each part of one.
Deaths per tonne produced are calculated for this material too, but not shown: that figure has no range yet.
Who produces it
The publisher’s own figures for 2025, across 13 countries. Nothing here has been linked to anything yet.
| Country | Produced | Share | Figure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Congo, Dem. Rep. COD |
1,300 t | 52.3% | estimated |
| Rwanda RWA |
400 t | 16.1% | estimated |
| Nigeria NGA |
390 t | 15.7% | estimated |
| Brazil BRA |
190 t | 7.6% | estimated |
| China CHN |
80 t | 3.2% | estimated |
| Australia AUS |
50 t | 2.0% | estimated |
| Ethiopia ETH |
40 t | 1.6% | estimated |
| Russian Federation RUS |
30 t | 1.2% | estimated |
| Burundi BDI |
2 t | 0.1% | estimated |
| Bolivia BOL |
2 t | 0.1% | estimated |
| Mozambique MOZ |
1 t | 0.0% | estimated |
Production figures: FAO, FAOSTAT, CC BY 4.0. FAO does not endorse any figure made from them, and none is implied.
What share of an industry’s output it is
Worked out from production, not typed in: an industry’s split between materials is the share of what it actually produced. These are WORLD figures, all years together; the model itself uses a separate mix for every country and year, because a world mix would link deaths in the Congo to copper mined in Chile.
| Industry | Share of output | How |
|---|---|---|
| Mining of metal ores 07 |
0.1% | world mix · LOW |
| Mining and quarrying B |
0.0% | world mix · LOW |
Weight and value answer different questions and are never added together. A tonne of gold weighs the same as a tonne of iron ore but is worth far more, so the share of an industry’s harm this material gets depends on which one is used.
Which wars the model links to it
The average share of each war’s harm that the model links to this material, taken over the countries and years the war covers. An average of shares is not a share of a total, and the two differ whenever the coverage is uneven.
| War | Average share of its harm | Years |
|---|---|---|
| Sudan: Government | 25.38% | 4 |
| Government of Rwanda - Civilians | 5.46% | 22 |
| DR Congo (Zaire): Government | 4.25% | 26 |
| Angola: Government | 0.06% | 1 |
| Ethiopia: Government | 0.05% | 3 |
| Nigeria: Government | 0.03% | 17 |
| Syria: Government | 0.00% | 1 |
| Iraq: Government | 0.00% | 1 |
| Ukraine: Lugansk | 0.00% | 1 |
| Russia - Ukraine | 0.00% | 4 |
These are shares of a war, not counts of people. The number of deaths they stand for is calculated but not published: it has no range yet and has not passed the test on past years.
Harm per tonne and per euro
Harm per tonne and harm per euro are both calculated. Neither is shown yet.
Harm per tonne of this material is defined for 16 years, 2010 to 2025: the years for which the model has both the harm and the world production of this material.
Both are numbers of people divided by an amount, from a calculation that has no range and has not passed the test on past years yet, and nothing of that kind is published until it has. What this page can say now is whether each can be worked out, and on what basis.
Which products use it
Semi-finished and finished products whose list of materials reaches this material, through every step in between, and how much of it one of them needs — waste included.
| Product | Needs |
|---|---|
| Printed circuit board assembly
semi-finished product |
0.100 g for one kilogram of assembled printed circuit board |
| Laptop
finished product |
0.0336 g for one laptop of 2,706 g, the average of 16 disassembled models from 1999 to 2011 |
| Smartphone
finished product |
0.00189 g for one smartphone of 135 g, the average of 12 disassembled models from 2004 to 2015 |
Amounts, not harm: how much of the material the product’s supply chain needs. The harm that carries is not shown.
Sources
| Version of the data | Downloaded | File fingerprint |
|---|---|---|
| usgs_mcs · MCS2026-20260206 | 2026-09-29 | 582a0aa231aea53d… |
U.S. Geological Survey, National Minerals Information Center, Mineral Commodity Summaries — MCS2026-20260206, retrieved 2026-09-29 from https://www.sciencebase.gov/catalog/file/get/69837e43b66b01367d7ec7c7?f=__disk__d3%2Fac%2F84%2Fd3ac8466552946c5e8caa2c2c6338d9e1aff655d. Licensed under Creative Commons Zero v1.0 Universal (public domain dedication) (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/).