Using Waste to Clean Arsenic From Lake Contaminated by Gold Mine!

Today we are going to talk about a lake that was contaminated by the Gold Mine.

Levels of arsenic in Northern Ontario’s Long Lake are so high that some local residents can no longer drink the water. Arsenic has been leaching into the lake from tailings at the abandoned Long Lake Gold Mine. This mine operated until 1937 and produced more than 200,000 tons of waste which caused contamination. Mining causes devastating damage to our environment! We don’t have to mine for rare metals and destroy our ecosystem, we can just recycle and reuse the precious metals so we can limit mining.

The scientists found that mixing wood chips, leaf mulch, and iron filings (leftover from manufacturing car engines) with limestone creates conditions that encourage bacteria to grow. The bacteria pull the arsenic from the water by converting it to a solid form that is essentially trapped within the waste material filter.

Let’s make sure we keep our earth clean and not cause deadly contamination or pollution! Please do make the earth a better place to live for our future generations to come!!!

Source: Canadian Light Source