Mining and Environment

Mining companies give us the metals and minerals that humanity uses for shelter, survival, work and pleasure, as well as the expansion into space and interplanetary endeavors. At the same time, they want to conduct this business in an environmentally responsible manner. Yet mining by its very nature requires that land, air and water systems be disturbed. While the economic benefits of the industry are as important today as they ever were, the public has become increasingly concerned about the impact that mining is having on the natural environment.

The metals and industrial minerals that mining produces can find their way into the environment and become pollutants. The byproducts that occur with the metals, such as sulphur and arsenic, can be dangerous to the environment if they are released. The fuels and chemicals the industry uses to do its job are potential pollutants too. Mining creates and employs hazardous substances that must be handled with a lot of care.

Other pollutants produced by the mining industry are of more concern to the workers in the industry than to the public which are at large. Dusts, for example, which are most of the time hazardous hygienically, are produced by a lot of mining activities. Noise, too, is a form of pollution of concern for those in the environment of work. In uranium mines, the products of radioactive decay are a principal concern.

The challenge for industries is to find, extract and process mineral resources with the least possible environmental disruption. To be able to meet this challenge, they adopt an expanded range of protective measures, including: sensitive treatment of the land during exploration; environmental and aesthetic management of land under development; environmentally sustainable production procedures during the mining and metallurgical processes; and decommissioning and reclamation practices aimed at restoring the land.

Accountability and environmental performance are important issues for the mining companies, their share-holders and the public. Most companies now include a discussion of environmental topics in their yearly reports so as to keep shareholders and the public informed about the measures they are taking to protect the land, water and air quality at their operations.