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Polluted Air
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Pouring gold bars at the Ashanti Goldfields
mine in Obuasi, Ghana. Credit: Penny Tweedie/Oxfam
| Open-pit mines produce a lot of dust, and the liquid waste in tailings dams, when dried in the atmosphere, can also be a source of dust for people living nearby. Increased vehicle traffic near mines kicks up dust and pollutes the air with exhaust fumes.
Most mine-site processing of ore does not yield a metal that is pure enough for industrial use, so further refining is necessary. For gold, aluminum, nickel and copper, this takes place at a smelter, a kind of furnace in which the processed ore is subjected to very high temperatures in order to melt the metal and release it from other materials in the ore. Smelting technology has improved considerably over the past half century, but smelters still release a great deal of air pollution, especially oxides of nitrogen and sulfur, components of smog and acid rain, as well as lead.
Metal smelter in La Oroya, Peru.
Credit: Earthjustice Legal Defense Fund | In the Peruvian town of La Oroya, site of a smelter operated by the US-based Doe Run Corporation, a study by the Peruvian Ministry of Health revealed that 99 percent of the children have severe lead poisoning, and 20 percent of these children needed urgent hospitalization. The smelter produces gold bullion bars, silver, lead, cadmium, zinc, and copper.
Smelters also release tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. Aluminum smelters, for example, release 2 tons of carbon dioxide and 1.4 kilos of perfluorocarbons (PFCs) for every ton of aluminum produced. PFCs have up to 9,200 times the heat-trapping potential of carbon and will linger in the atmosphere for tens of thousands of years.
For more information:
Ruined Lands, Poisoned Waters. A section from Dirty Metals: Mining, Communities and the Environment. (621KB)
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