A 70% excess of mesothelioma, an asbestos-related cancer, has been reported among men in northeastern Minnesota, where iron mining has been the major industry. The Minnesota Department of Health has studied iron miners who developed mesothelioma to identify possible sources of asbestos exposure. A database of all Minnesota residents diagnosed with mesothelioma between 1988 and 1996 was linked t...

Resource gathering is depending on leaner crude ores. Iron ore mining typifies this trend. To make lean taconite iron ores useful required a technologic breakthrough-pelletization. The shift to iron ore pellets has the advantage that they require less energy and labor per ton of molten iron than high-grade naturally concentrated ores. Increased reliance on pellets causes a geographic shift of s...

One of the most important steps involved in mining operations is to select an appropriate extraction method for mine resources. After choosing the extraction method, it is usually impossible to replace it with another one because it may be so expensive that implementation of the entire project could be economically impossible. Choosing a mining method depends on the geological and geometrical c...

The origin of the Proterozoic Choghart iron oxide deposit in the Bafq mining district of Central Iran has been the subject of a long-standing dispute. Some authors believe that it was formed from magma, while others suggest metasomatic replacement of preexisting rocks. The present study on the basis of new oxygen isotope, REE and geochemical data concludes that neither of these two hypotheses c...

An ongoing question in paleoenvironmental reconstructions of the central African rainforest concerns the role that prehistoric metallurgy played in shaping forest vegetation. Here we report evidence of intensive iron-ore mining and smelting in forested regions of the northern Congo Basin dating to the late Holocene. Volumetric estimates on extracted iron-ore and associated slag mounds from preh...

Sierra Leone is blessed with abundant natural resources but yet prone to environmental degradation due to the mining operations. Most often, the mining communities are faced with social tensions, as a result of the possible trade-off between the expected employment impact and the cost of mining operations to the environment. Over the past decades, the contribution of the mining sector to the de...