Mine is not Rare to Find

TSP: Mr. Waterways, water from Mines isn't mine!

From a recent News Article by Elizabeth Miller titled "Climate Change Is Acidifying and Contaminating Drinking Water and Alpine Ecosystems", published in November by Scientific American, the following points were derived.

1.    Water bodies may be contaminated via leaching of metals down the mountains as well as from mining environments.

2.    Some acidification and mineralization such as those from the mountain may be natural.

3.    This has a huge adverse effect on aquatic creatures.

4.    Climate change speeds up the process of aquatic ecosystem contamination.

5.    This could alter water quality in watersheds in mountains containing high concentrations of minerals.

6.    According to a research carried out by Garrett Rue, a postdoctoral scientist studying waterways at the University of Colorado’s Institute for Arctic and Alpine Research, the water contaminants may include rare earth metals.

7.    "In samples collected between 2012 and 2019 in Colorado’s Snake River Basin for Rue’s recent research, the team found tens of parts per billion of dissolved rare earth metals lanthanum, cerium, neodymium, samarium, gadolinium, dysprosium, erbium, ytterbium and yttrium." 

8.    The researcher reports that the concentrations may not have been a toxicant at low levels but “we could be crossing a threshold.” 

9.    Rue also reported finding rare earth elements in the bodies of stream-dwelling insects, indicating that these metals are entering the food web.

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