Another good day when I can report that mining is not guilty. Another good day when I can report that motor cars are a vastly bigger source of air pollution than all the county’s mines put together. Now we await the howl of protest from those who own cars. And the howl of protest from those who would like to remove cars from the roads and stop mining the metals needed to make all those cars. 

I refer to a perfect presentation by Leonora Rojas-Bracho entitled Emissions from Mexico. She notes that the Mexican mining industry produces only two percent of the non-biogenic NOx emissions, five percent of the non-geogenic SOx emissions, four percent of the PM10 emissions, and three percent of the non-geogenic PM2.5 emissions.  This 2006 presentation is chock-full of information so I repeat no more but point you thus if that is your interest. 

Colleagues who have been to Mexico City tell me that a comparison of mines and Mexico City is simply not kosher.  Regardless, I would like to meet the author—her series of presentations on the web are superb and if the air clears, I hope she gets credit. 

Mines produce dust, of course; but that dust can be controlled, or at least it should be controlled. I wonder if the next big wave of litigation to come down the spout is a flood of class action lawsuits claiming damage to the lungs of those who lived downwind of mine tailings impoundments.  I will be first in line.  At primary school we came in from our breaks and wrote our names in the dust that had accumulated on our desks—dust emanating from the old slimes dam across the road—from the slimes dam that was reworked for more gold and uranium. In high school, we rode to school past three slime dams and on bad days you could not see the road ahead so thick was the dust. Google Earth no longer shows those dams—also gone to be reworked for gold and uranium. Nobody knew or cared in those days, that’s the way the world was: the dust from the dumps and the smell from the pulp and paper mill were—according to my mother and grandmother—the symbols of success and freedom from the fear of another depression. 

One final note to the technically inclined: at this link you will find the EPA technical approaches to quantifying dust from mines (and other sources.)  Have you used this for your mine, and if so what did you find?  Please comment below.