This presents the search results from the vast World Bank database of projects funding clean-up of abandoned uranium mines and uranium processing facilities operated in the 1950s and 1960s throughout the world.
Much has been learned from these projects regarding the nature of contaminant distribution around such sites and their environmental significance. All reports offer guidance to member countries in establishing modern regulations for uranium processing and associated activities. Of particular importance was the discrimination between natural, pre-existing soil and groundwater contamination and that caused by unregulated uranium mining and processing as practiced in the 1950s and 1960s.
Similarities of issues of soil and groundwater contamination were found with mining and processing of other metals as well, which are all related to a lack of local and federal regulations in place at the time, especially of those deposits containing arsenic and other metals, such as mercury, which was (and still is) used to recover gold by local inhabitants via small-scale operations. Exposure to both of the latter (As and Hg) represent serious health concerns to local inhabitants.
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Managed & Built by I2M Consulting, LLC | © 2010-
Managed & Built by I2M Consulting, LLC | © 2010-