Congo Fighting Revives Tainted Phone Fears

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In addition, the earlier tantalum controversy inspired companies to take steps to ensure their metal comes from legitimate sources. German metals company H.C. Starck, which buys ore and refines it into tantalum powder for industrial use, says it gets most of its raw material from Australia and none from Africa.

Impossible to Be Certain

Nokia says it requires component suppliers to certify that none of their tantalum comes from the Congo and it periodically checks compliance. In any case, Nokia says that the mobile-phone industry accounts for 2% of total tantalum demand and that each mobile phone contains only 40 milligrams of the stuff.

The odds that your phone contains conflict coltan are pretty long. But activists say the point is that even the relatively small amounts of coltan coming from the Congo are providing revenue for the warring factions. "I agree that a small percentage of coltan is coming from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, but this small percentage is very important to the DRC," says Esther de Haan, a researcher at Dutch activist group makeITfair, who notes that unsafe working conditions are also a huge concern. "Companies are responsible for going down the supply chain and finding out where [their supply] is coming from."

London-based humanitarian group Global Witness has also revived the conflict coltan issue, on Nov. 14 calling on companies to ensure they are not buying coltan or other minerals such as tin ore or gold from the North and South Tivu regions of the Congo, where the fighting is taking place. But it is nearly impossible for companies to say with absolute certainty that no tantalum of dubious origin makes it into the supply chain. Shady operators have an incentive to buy black market ore, which is cheaper because it avoids the costly customs-clearance process that legitimate importers must undergo.

Most developed countries have strict controls. But some Chinese ports wave shipments through, industry sources say. Once the ore has been refined to nonradioactive tantalum powder, it's impossible to trace.

Tracking Coltan Fingerprints

There may be a new way to keep illegally mined coltan and other valuable metals off the market. Frank Melcher, a scientist at Germany's Federal Institute for Geosciences and Natural Resources in Hanover, leads a team that has devised a way to identify where ore comes from. Every coltan mine has its own geological history and composition. Melcher's team has already catalogued 600 unique coltan "fingerprints," and can tell precisely where ore comes from, even when batches from different locations are mixed together.

With backing from the German government, Melcher is pushing to set up a system in which legitimate mines would register their coltan fingerprints. An independent organization would spot-check ore and reject any that isn't in the approved database. "Our goal is to establish a certified trading chain between traders and consumers," Melcher says. Such a system could also be used to ensure that mines provide decent working conditions and meet environmental standards.

The problem is that the testing procedure is costly and time-consuming. But Melcher sounds optimistic that companies that use components containing tantalum will support his plan. "They don't want to be in the news again," he says.

Ewing is BusinessWeek's European regional editor.