English Essays
Have you ever imagined how mining affects people living near the mining sites? Well, mining can be destructive talking about health and lifestyle of miners, native communities, Afro-Descendants, farmers and citizens that do not have the enough money to move from the place. Mining is mineral extraction. These minerals are processed and later used in our daily life. There are different mining board categories, one example is surface mining. Surface mining is a mine method used for more than the 60% of the extracted minerals, there are distinct types of surface mining, such as open-pit mining that are mines with the shape of big, deep and wide pits. Open-pit mines are usually used to extract metals. Another type of surface mining is strip mining. Strip mining is to clean and remove the dust, earth and rock to take out the coal that is buried. And finally quarrying, which is a surface excavation where stone is obtained by digging and blasting. The other board category is underground mining. The larger part of the world`s coal is pick up from underground mines, where coal companies are allowed to extract more profound deposits. Underground mining causes greenhouse gases and lower the flow of ground water, even though according to greenplace.org underground mining is seen as less damaging than surface mining. There are few steps for mining to be done, the first one is prospecting. Prospecting is when workers with experience and geological knowledge choose and identify an area where they can work. The second step is reaching the ore, for this, miners need to dig levels into the ground. Then is breaking the ore underground, this means extracting the ore from the rock. The fourth step is bringing the ore to the surface, followed by dressing the ore, which means to process it. And the last one, smelting the ore, this means to extract metal from the ore. This whole process involves risking miners’ health. Mining is harmful for the communities established near or in the mine site. These people have high health risks for plenty of reasons. They can also be displaced from their homes, however, mining improves the economy of our country. Human beings have killed people, traditions, and knowledge, because of their egoism, for what we think are “needs”, for the economy, for mining.
Mining provides materials that we use in our lives, but mining can harm the water. One example is the acid mine drainage (AMD). According to safewater.org, acid mine drainage is given when huge amounts of rock that contain sulfide are shoveled or excavated with an open hole, and get in contact with water or oxygen. This creates a bacteria called Thiobacillus Ferroxidans. Besides the damage it causes to aquatic life and the ecosystem, the fish living in this water bodies eat this metals such as copper, silver, zinc and mercury. Fishers eat and sell this fish and it could be dangerous. For example, the mercury infiltrates the food chain and attacks human nervous system, and citizens can suffer from health problems for eating this kind of food. In strip mining we can identify a similar problem, when rain falls into topsoil, it pollutes the water bodies, hurting fish and underwater plants. This kind of damage stays even if mining is already done. According to greenplace.org another health risk this people possibly bear is when coal mining is done, because of coal dust inhalation, very fine mineral particles may accumulate in the lungs and cause Pneumoconiosis. According to livescience another disease is silicosis and may happen when people inhales quartz or crystalline silica, also the black lung disease, and neumoconiosis, which is the accumulation of dust in the lungs and how tissue reacts.
Another way the lifestyle of people has been affected is when mining companies displace whole groups, actually according to funtraenergetica digits, 80% of the violations of human rights occur on mine sites. Also the 87% of the forced displacement comes from this places, as well as the 89% of the crimes against indigenous people and ancestors, and the 90% against Afro-Descendants. The presence of mining complexes create new conflicts such as the loss of constitutional rights for the population to have a dignified life. There is also the problem between the interests on mine extraction and the conservation of ancestral territory. There are cases where mining companies find a way to obtain the permissions through contracts to mine on ancestral territory without indigenous people been consulted in advance. In this kinds of situations more than one human right is broken. Miners and native communities are in constant fight for territory.
Mining is Harmful for the Community
By Luciana Quintero