These consequences are rarely talked about. “Sheep are born with double rows of teeth” [FRAGMENT]

Social media is the epitome of self-contradiction. On the one hand, we have their virtuality, ephemerality and the constant novelty of the sensations they provide us with, on the other hand, the raw matter of the components that set everything in motion: their ancient roots and the pracosmic origin of the raw materials they are made of. It’s hard to believe that something as brand new and shiny as your average mobile phone contains ingredients that go back billions of years. To understand the ecological footprint of our communication ecosystem, we need to go back to the basic sources: rare earth metals and other minerals, without which our equipment would not work.

I often think how wonderful it would be if appliances had a list of the ingredients they were made of, just like food packaging. Maybe this would remind everyone of social media’s intimate relationship with nature. Canned ravioli contains familiar ingredients (tomatoes, water, carrots), dark chemistry and more or less natural additives (sodium phosphate, xanthan gum, carotene, lactic acid), as well as other wonders. It’s the same with a mobile phone. It contains silica and sand, the main components of the shield, tin for soldering electrical circuits, gold, silver and copper particles distributed on the motherboard and in the cables. The device’s processor is made primarily of silicon, but also contains phosphorus, antimony, arsenic, boron, indium, and gallium. Then there is the whole list of rare earth metals, whose role is even more obscure to the layman: tantalum, terbium, yttrium, and so on. In an ordinary smartphone, we have about 70 out of 83 solid and non-radioactive elements from the Mendeleev table, including 62 different metals. The list of components of our cell would be quite long. Some of them are present in trace amounts, but all of them have to be extracted from the ground, processed, delivered and processed in the factory.

Rare earth metals are the most interesting for our considerations. We don’t call them that because there are so few of them. On the contrary, there are enough of them. They are “rare” because they are difficult to extract and separate from the carrier minerals with which they occur, and certainly not easy without causing great ecological damage. This group includes 17 chemical elements, 16 of which can be found in the device held in the hand. They have unique magnetic and conductive properties, thanks to which they fulfill many functions that we combine with smartphones and tablets. For example, terbium, yttrium, gadolinium and europium allow you to achieve vivid colors on monitors. Neodymium and praseodymium make the cell vibrate. These raw materials are used not only in telephones. They are the basic components of a multitude of devices used in military electronics and goods offered to ordinary consumers, from electric cars and other means of transport to LED displays of modern weapons systems.

Most of these elements come from China, which, by the way, sometimes has an interesting effect on geopolitics: in 1997, President Deng Xiaoping declared:

The Middle East has oil and we have rare earth metals.

The world’s largest deposits are located in China, constituting about 37% of global resources. (Vietnam and Brazil each have 18% and the US about 1%). More importantly, Chinese companies control about 85% of the supply chain of these raw materials (as high as 97% in 2009) – the reason for this is low labor costs and (until recently in force) not very strict regulations on environmental protection and mining techniques .

Washington think tanks are wringing their hands over China’s dominance in the rare earths market. If China cuts the supply of raw materials, manufacturers of electronic equipment, critical to the digital infrastructure of government, business, research, healthcare and other essential sectors, will be severely affected. In 2010, China did just that, suspending the export of these ingredients to Japan for two months as part of the next installment of the dispute over islands in the South China Sea. In 2012, the US, Japan and other countries filed a protest with the World Trade Organization (WTO) against China’s export controls, which the WTO recognized as legitimate in 2015. This episode has prompted countries to diversify their sources of supply and search for raw materials outside of China, but the Chinese advantage in the market is still very large.

Rare earth metals, wherever they come from and where they have been processed, end up as pawns on the chessboard of international security policy; their impact on the environment is much more conspicuous. The process of their extraction can be very toxic, both for the immediate environment and the entire ecosystem, as well as for the people working on it. The extraction and processing of these metals consumes huge amounts of water and generates significant amounts of CO215. Rare earth metals need to be separated from the minerals they come with – this is where waste is generated and environmental pollution occurs. In general, they are obtained either by removing successive layers of the soil, or by drilling holes in it, into which PVC pipes transporting water are inserted, and then the soil and the chemicals contained in it are washed away. In both cases, the material is transported to large settling ponds where the substance is separated. During the entire operation, huge amounts of potentially harmful waste are generated. According to David Abraham, author of “The Elements of Power [Pierwiastki władzy]”Only 0.2% of mined clay contains valuable rare earth metals”, and the rest “litters mountains and streams wherever it goes”.

All these processes can introduce significant amounts of ammonia and nitrogen compounds into the soil and surface waters, or leach substances hazardous to health, such as cadmium or lead, from the earth’s interior. Rare earth metals mined near uranium deposits sometimes have radioactive materials attached to them. Some of these metals require specific treatment that is harmful in many respects. Let’s look at cerium (used to polish screen glass): it is obtained by crushing mounds of earth in which it occurs and dissolving them in a mixture of sulfuric acid and nitric acid. The whole process is carried out on a huge scale and generates monstrous amounts of toxic waste. According to the China Society of Rare Earth Metals, each ton of mined and processed raw material leaves behind 75,000 liters of acidic water and a ton of radioactive garbage.

Everywhere in China where there are mines, there are high levels of ground and surface water pollution. Prolonged contact with chemicals is a major threat to human health and nature. Local residents report grotesque deformities in animals – for example, sheep are born with double rows of teeth. Drinking water from local wells, which looks good but “stinks terribly”, causes gums to blacken and teeth to fall out. A Washington Post study of villages located near graphite mining plants speaks of “sparkling air at night, damaged crops, sooty homes and equipment, polluted drinking water, and local authorities turning a blind eye to large-scale plants that give people jobs.” “.

Sheep – illustration photo photo. Dawid Chalimoniuk / Agencja Wyborcza.pl

While China has begun to adopt methods to reduce the environmental damage caused by rare-earth and other mineral extraction, local communities have already suffered damage that will cost billions of dollars (if at all) to repair. Surface sedimentation ponds, to which the excavated material goes, are scattered across several regions of the country, and are usually located near river systems and other surface and deep water resources. The slightest leak in such a pond (for example, caused by a landslide) can threaten the drinking water sources that supply tens of millions of people living below.

One of China’s largest and longest-running rare-earth mines is Bayan Obo near Baotou in the Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region. A BBC science journalist wrote that Bayan Obo is “the closest place to hell on Earth”. One of the unique sights in the area is the 11-square-kilometer silt-filled pond, three times the size of Stanley Park in Vancouver. The journalist mentioned a “truly lunar, spooky dystopian landscape” that depressed and frightened him as he realized that it was “a by-product not only of electronic equipment but also of green technologies such as wind turbines and electric cars.” that the smug West is so excited about.” Not knowing how to react, he acted as most of us do when faced with something that moves us: he took photos and made videos with his “cerium-polished iPhone”. According to China Water Risk, a Chinese environmental NGO, the mine “cast a deadly curse on the nearby villages” and the giant waste pond (according to some) “is a ticking time bomb that heralds the disaster of the Yellow River, only 10 kilometers away “.

The other great mining district, where medium-heavy and heavy rare earths are mined, is located in the south of China, near Ganzhou, and is called the Kingdom of Rare Earth Metals. Concrete settling pools and plastic sewage tanks are a normal sight here. Some are open and exposed to the elements. Satellite images show dozens of such catchments scattered across the mountains, dangerously close to the area’s water supply systems, which are constantly threatened by pollution because of their proximity. Rivers flowing through the area, such as the Dong Jiang, provide drinking water to densely populated cities and regions, such as Hong Kong (7.3 million), Shenzhen (14.5 million) and Guangzhou (Canton – 16.5 million).

A black market for rare earth metals has developed around the mines, although it is by definition difficult to quantify as no one formally records turnover. Occasionally, something is learned from the interception of illegal cargo, such as a tonne of rare earth metals discovered by Weihai Customs on a container ship bound for South Korea. In 2015, it was estimated that around 40,000 tons of rare earth metals are smuggled from China annually, more than the official export, estimated at 28,000 tons. The black market in mining creates even more pollution, as illegal mines do not comply with either environmental guidelines or standards. They mostly use primitive leaching and separation techniques, producing waste and sewage that are even more dangerous than those produced by more modern methods. In the absence of supervision and failure to respect the law, toxic waste can be discharged without proper protection, is improperly stored and penetrates into nearby water systems.

Although China dominates the global production of rare earth metals, the market is slowly diversifying. This does not mean that environmental damage will suddenly decrease. To take just one example: large amounts of such elements are mined in Australia, but the companies that own the mines usually outsource the most toxic processes to foreign contractors. Australia’s Lynas Corporation orders rare-earth metal processing to Malaysia, and that’s where the poisonous waste ends up. The company built the world’s largest mineral refinery in the country, but from the outset it was plagued by “environmentally hazardous construction problems associated with the project.” It is estimated that about 580,000 tons of low-level radioactive waste are currently stored in the facilities.

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