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Mining's Heavy Remnants

It seemed like a good idea at the time: Attractive red-brown rocks to spread across the driveway, along your patio or walking paths and all around the garden – for free!

Now residents of one Oregon town are learning the real price they paid for that “free” rock: A potentially serious risk to their family’s health. The rock, once waste from a mercury mine in rural Sutherlin, is laced with large quantities of not just mercury but arsenic as well. And environmental tests show the heavy metals are leaching into soil and water at dangerous levels all over town.

The mine itself continues to leach mercury into a nearby river and local fish have tested at high levels for the toxin, which causes learning difficulties in children as severe as mental retardation. Exposure to arsenic can cause skin cancer and has also been linked to diabetes.

Environmental officials warn children shouldn’t play in soil contaminated with arsenic and mercury, but there’s so much of the stuff all over town that residents fear they and their children have been heavily exposed for decades. The government recently stopped all testing and clean-up programs following budgetary cutbacks.

To learn more about the health effects of mercury and arsenic exposure for children, please click here.

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To read more about this and other environmental health issues, go to: www.environmentalhealthnews.org, www.ourstolenfuture.org, or www.healthandenvironment.org