The Range of Environmental Concerns - Mining and the Environment: From Ore to Metal - page 557

FIGURE 13.17
Hazardous Materials are Used at
Most Mine Sites and Risks Related to
Storage, Handling, Transportation and
the use of these Chemicals are Similar
to Those in Other Industries

a favourable legislative setting in regard of uranium mining. Australia is the second largest
uranium producers. Both countries together account for over 50% of global primary produc-
tion, today primarily used by the nuclear power industry to produce energy.
Since the advent of the i rst atomic bomb, uranium commands strong public interest.
Uranium is the heaviest metal occuring in nature, unstable and gradually breaking apart
or 'decaying' at the atomic level. Any such material is said to be radioactive. As uranium
slowly decays, it gives off invisible bursts of penetrating energy (termed atomic radiation).
It also produces more than a dozen other radioactive decay products of little or no com-
mercial value.
In public awareness for only a few decades, impacts on human health due to radioactiv-
ity have been unknowingly reported for centuries. Beginning in 1546, it was reported that
most underground miners in Schneeburg, Germany, died from mysterious lung ailments. By
1930, the same grim statistics were found among miners in Joachimsthal, Czechoslovakia, on
the other side of the same mountain range. More than half of them were dying of lung can-
cer, at a time when lung cancer was all but unknown among the non-mining populations on
both the German and Czech side of the mountains. The ores in question were particularly
rich in uranium.
Much research has been conducted on uranium and its various environmental and
health impacts (WHO 2001) and the following section draws on text by Edwards et al.
(2006) and Diehl (2004), if not otherwise stated. Health impacts of uranium mining are
long-term - sometimes over 20 years after end of work. Most studies i nd relative risks of
lung cancer between 2 and 5 times higher in uranium workers who have been exposed to
higher levels of radon, or to longer periods of low exposure. Some studies put these risks at
levels much higher (Stephens and Ahern 2001).
In most respects, conventional mining of uranium is the same as mining any other min-
eral ore, and the same environmental constraints apply in order to avoid off-site pollu-
tion. However uranium minerals are always associated with more radioactive elements
such as radium and radon. Therefore, although uranium itself is not very radioactive, the
ore which is mined, especially if it is very high-grade such as in some Canadian mines,
is hazardous if handled without regard to appropriate health and safety guidelines.

Health impacts of uranium
mining are long-term -
sometimes over 20 years after
end of work.