Black gold, tainted gold, and rare earth

In the aftermath of the deadly BP Gulf of Mexico oil disaster, the public mind has been appropriately concentrated on the hazards of natural resources extraction. A recent Journal of the American Medical Association online commentary by my colleague Dr. Gina Solomon highlights the potential physical and mental health dangers arising from oil spills, as well as the chemicals used to clean them up (http://jama.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/full/jama.2010.1254). This includes the residual risks that might come up through the food chain and on to the dinner table of seafood consumers. But needless to say, the most immediate risk arising from the blowout was experienced by the oil workers themselves. The deaths caused by the initial BP platform explosion can be added to the tragic roster of fatalities from the Upper Big Branch mine disaster in West Virginia earlier this year. In both cases, lingering questions of corporate culpability have yet to be answered. And, unfortunately, around the world the same sad story of resource exploitation is being played out.

Often the scenario is all too similar: large, industrial-scale mining and extraction with resulting injury and illness. But there is also a trend of mini-catastrophes of human suffering and environmental degradation. In May of this year during the brief window between Upper Big Branch mine and Gulf BP disasters, for example, the Nigerian government launched an investigation of household lead poisoning affecting two villages in the single rural region of that country. (http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5927a3.htm?s_cid=mm5927a3)
Over the previous 12 months, 118 children under age five had died, one in four of all villagers in that age range. Most of the cases had symptoms indicating severe lead poisoning. This suspicion was confirmed by the finding that 97% of surviving children tested had blood levels diagnostic of lead poisoning. The source of contamination was not from leaded paint or cookware, but rather from household processing of lead-impregnated gold ore extracted in subsistence-level family-based mining operations.

Half way around the world, intermediate-scale mining (some corporate, some smaller and unlicensed) have been wreaking havoc on the environment in southern China. These mines are not exploiting something as old fashioned as gold or fossil fuel, but rather the high tech "rare earth" elements dysprosium and terbium. The environmental degradation is manifested by blighted rice fields and tainted water, attributable in large part to acid runoff from metal extraction operations. Little to nothing is known about the possible human health effects of these exotic metals themselves. Decades-old medical research reports suggest that they can act as anticoagulants in test tube studies, but other studies have not been preformed, even thought these and other rare earth-based materials are entering increasingly into commerce. Ironically, they are the darling of green technologies; they are also considered strategically vital to modern military applications.

Indeed, the military-industrial complex has a keen interest in natural resources extraction, for low and high-tech purposes. Underscoring this, a June 2010 front page New York Times article, "U.S. Identifies Mineral Riches in Afghanistan," highlighted that war zone's newly identified valuable commodities. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/14/world/asia/14minerals.html). This puff piece for the Pentagon emphasized potential wealth in the metal critical to newer battery systems (quoting from an internal Pentagon memo opining that Afghanistan might become "the Saudi Arabia of lithium"). Among a long list of other exploitable resources, rare earth elements came in at 7.4 billion in potential reserves. Close behind that was another "valued" resource (6.3 billion) waiting to be exploited: untapped asbestos reserves. This conservative estimate does not take into account the added price tag of the occupational and environmental disease that would be caused by exploiting and exporting this unnecessary hazard (another 6 billion again in health care costs, not to mention the potential business development opportunities for a native Afghani litigation industry?) Unfortunately for speculators, the Afghani lead assets were only gauged to be worth 500 million.