Study at Porgera gold mine shows benefits of treating tailings with lime
Study co-author Joshua Fisher (lower right) collecting water samples from treated mine tailings.
(Image courtesy Joshua Fisher – Columbia University).
A study conducted at the Porgera gold mine in Papua New Guinea showed that treating mine tailings with lime helped stabilize arsenic in soil and sediments around the mine, therefore preventing the toxic chemical from remaining dissolved in water and affecting people and ecosystems.
To understand how this sequestration process works, researchers from Australia and the US examined how pH and climate patterns, specifically wetting and drying cycles, impact arsenic capture and storage.