Tens of millions more people living in the entire state of Florida are now exposed to toxic water runoff from metal mining, a new study finds.
The report reveals the devastating effects that could follow a reckless transition to “green” energy, further exacerbating the ecological damage caused by more than 150 years of fossil fuel drilling and extraction. ing.
Researchers have found that around the world, 23 million people, 5.72 million livestock, more than 16 million acres of irrigated farmland, and 297,800 miles worth of rivers are contaminated by toxic byproducts of mining seeping into the water. discovered.
Mining this metal is essential for manufacturing high-tech electronics, solar cells, wind turbines, and all the batteries needed to store sustainable “green” energy (and power electric cars and iPhones). , contains many so-called “rare earths.”
New research focuses on environmental impact, but the global metals mining industry recently criticized Apple, Google, Microsoft and Tesla over child slavery in Congo, where 70 percent of the industry’s cobalt comes from. Facing shocking lawsuits against major tech companies, including
“The rapid growth of the world’s metal mines is critical to the world’s transition to green energy.” chris thomasHe is a zoologist at the University of Lincoln, specializing in spatial ecology and threats to the world’s water supplies.
Thomas led the analysis and modeling efforts for the new study published today. science.
Thomas and his colleagues have developed a new database backed by ground tests. This resulted in a map of hundreds of square miles worth of rivers and floodplains contaminated by these industrial processes around the world.
The devastation caused by this pollution was found to be widespread, affecting a total of approximately 297,800 miles (479,200 km) of river systems and more than 63,000 square miles (164,000 sq km) of floodplains around the world. .
However, North America was the most affected region, with 123,280 miles of contaminated river systems and approximately 10.7 million acres of contaminated floodplain.
However, the damage was less severe in South America, with 50,766 miles of rivers and more than 9.5 million acres of floodplain affected. The same is true in Asia, where there are approximately 37,842 river miles and approximately 8.3 million acres of floodplain contaminated by metal mining waste.
But when it comes to the potential for localized damage, the scientists sidestep the harshest criticism of the “environmental legacy of historic mines” and avoid the “wild west” where long-abandoned old mines have left lasting environmental damage. “It’s the most problematic in Europe.” .
“Much of the global pollution we estimate on our maps is a legacy from the industrial era,” Thomas said in a press statement. “Naturally, modern mines are encouraged to prioritize environmental sustainability.”
The researchers focused on lead, zinc, copper and arsenic contamination from all known operating and non-operating metal mines, as well as from facilities used to sequester hazardous mine waste. We developed a model to predict the diffusion of pollutants.
These potentially harmful pollutants and industrial byproducts enter local water supplies, whether transported downstream where metals are deposited along river beds and floodplains, or sink deep into underground aquifers. It may penetrate.
Mark Macklin, director of the university’s Lincoln Center for Water and Planetary Health, who led the international team behind the new study, said he hoped the new study’s maps and modeling tools would help prevent reckless mining in the future. Ta.
“We expect this will facilitate mitigating the environmental impacts of historic and current mines,” Macklin said.
“Our new method for predicting the dispersion of mine waste in river systems provides governments, environmental regulators, the mining industry and local communities with, for the first time, a tool that allows them to assess the off-site and downstream impacts of mines on ecosystems. and human health.
Overall, researchers identified 159,735 abandoned mines and 22,609 active mines, as well as 11,587 mine waste storage facilities and 257 known storage facility failures and leaks. Cases were identified.
In their report, the researchers describe their new database as “the most comprehensive compilation of metal mine locations to date.”
Concerns about how negatively metal mining for sustainable technology impacts ecosystems are complicated by the diversity of resources involved, which can lead to ‘apples-to-oranges’ comparisons.
according to MIT Environmental Solutions InitiativeGreen energy technologies such as wind turbines and electric vehicles often require far more minerals to be mined than current fossil fuel infrastructure.
For example, a university team at MIT reports that an electric car requires six times more metal and mineral materials than an internal combustion engine car.
And wind farms require nine times more of these mined compounds than conventional power plants. Gas-fired power plant.
However, these large investments in initial overhead costs are negligible given the amount of fossil fuels that are currently being repeatedly mined to meet growing energy demands.
As of 2021, more than 7.5 billion tonnes of coal has been extracted from the ground, wreaking havoc on local people and environments from Australia’s Sydney Royal National Park to coal-rich China’s Inner Mongolia and beyond. .
This is a whopping 25 times the current estimate of the amount of metal mining needed for the clean energy revolution by 2040, according to projections by the Paris-based institute. international energy agency (During the oil crisis of the 1970s, OECD).
According to the IEA, the transition will require less than 30 million tonnes of new mining.
But these environmental impacts often need to be evaluated in more detail on a case-by-case basis, said Scott O’Dell, a visiting scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Environmental Solutions Initiative who specializes in clean energy and mining. Warning.
Mining two different metals requires different techniques with different impacts. The same is true if two different deposits of the same metal are in markedly different conditions.
O’Dell said: “If someone tells you that one is better than the other in terms of direct pound-for-pound impact, I think you should ask a lot of questions about how they arrived at that answer.” Told.