Science Progress (2006), 89(2)
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Remediation
strategies for
historical mining and smelting sites
Agnieszka
Dybowskaa,b, Margaret Faragoa,c,
Eugenia Valsami-Jonesb
and Iain Thorntona
ABSTRACT
The
environmental, social and economic problems associated with abandoned
mine sites are serious and global. Environmental
damage arising from
polluted waters and dispersal of
contaminated waste is a feature characteristic
of many old mines in North America,
Today,
because of the efficiency of mining operations and legal requirements
in many countries for prevention of
environmental damage from mining
operations, the release of metals to the
environment from modern mining is
low. However, many mineralized areas that were
extensively worked in the
18th
and 19th centuries and left abandoned after mining had ceased, have left
a legacy of metal contaminated land.
Unlike
organic chemicals and plastics, metals cannot be degraded
chemically or biologically into non-toxic and
environmentally neutral constituents.
Thus
sites contaminated with toxic metals present a particular
challenge for remediation. Soil remediation
has been the subject of a
significant amount of research work in the
past decade; this has resulted in
a number of remediation options currently
available or being developed.
Remediation
strategies for metalymetalloid contaminated historical
mining sites are reviewed and summarized in this
article. It focuses on the
current applications of in
situ remediation with the use of soil amendments
(adsorption and precipitation based methods are discussed)
and phytoremediation
(in situ plant based technology
for environmental clean up and
restoration). These are promising alternative
technologies to traditional
options of excavation and ex
situ treatment, offering an advantage of
being non-invasive and low cost. In particular,
they have been shown to be
effective in remediation of mining and
smelting contaminated sites,
Keywords: remediation
strategies, historical mining and smelting sites, in
situ metal immobilization,
phytoremediation
aCentre for Environmental Policy, Imperial College
London,
SW7 2BP,
bDepartment of Mineralogy,
SW7 5BD,
cPresent address: Department of Chemistry,
Road,