Toxic and Radioactive: The damage from mining rare elements

The gallium used for LEDs and the camera flash, the tantalum in capacitors and indium that powers the display were all pulled from the ground — at a price for nature and people. “Mining raw materials is always problematic, both with regard to human rights and ecology”, said Melanie Müller, raw materials expert of the German think tank SWP, “Their production process is pretty toxic.” 

The gallium and indium in many phones comes from China or South Korea, the tantalum from the Democratic Republic of Congo or Rwanda. All in, such materials comprise less than ten grams of a phone’s weight. But these grams finance an international mining industry that causes radioactive earth dumps, poisoned groundwater and Indigenous population displacement. The problem is that modern technologies don’t work without what are known as critical raw materials. Collectively, solar panels, drones, 3D printers and smartphone contain as many as 30 of these different elements sourced from around the globe. A prime example is lithium from Chile, which is essential in the manufacture of batteries for electric vehicles. 

“No one, not even within the industry, would deny that mining lithium causes enormous environmental damage”, Müller explained, in reference to the artificial lakes companies create when flushing the metal out of underground brine reservoirs. “The process uses vast amounts of water, so you end up with these huge flooded areas where the lithium settles.” 

This means of extraction results in the destruction and contamination of the natural water system. Unique plants and animals lose access to groundwater and watering holes. There have also been reports of freshwater becoming salinated due to extensive acidic waste water during lithium mining. 

But lithium is not the only raw material that causes damage. Securing just one ton of rare earth elements produces 2,000 tons of toxic waste, and has devastated large regions of China, said Günther Hilpert, Head of the Asia Research Division of the German think tank SWP. 

He says companies there have adopted a process of spraying acid over the mining areas in order to separate the rare earths from other ores, and that mined areas are often abandoned after excavation. “They are no longer viable for agricultural use”, Hilpert said. “Nature has been overexploited.” China is not the only country with low environmental mining standards and poor resource governance. In Madagascar, for example, a thriving illegal gem and metal mining sector has been linked to rainforest depletion and destruction of natural lemur habitats. States like Madagascar, Rwanda and the DRC score poorly on the Environmental Performance Index that ranks 180 countries for their effort on factors including conservation, air quality, waste management and emissions. Environmentalists are therefore particularly concerned that these countries are mining highly toxic materials like beryllium, tantalum and cobalt. 

But it is not only nature that suffers from the extraction of high-demand critical raw materials. “It is a dirty, toxic, partly radioactive industry”, Hilpert said. “China, for example, has never really cared about human rights when it comes to achieving production targets.” 

One of the most extreme examples is Baotou, a Chinese city in Inner Mongolia, where rare earth mining poisoned surrounding farms and nearby villages, causing thousands of people to leave the area.