Your Smartphone’s Dirty, Radioactive Secret | Mother Jones
►http://www.motherjones.com/environment/2012/11/rare-earth-elements-iphone-malaysia?page=1
Workers then boil off the liquid and separate out the rare earths from rock and radioactive elements. This is where things get dangerous: Companies must take precautions so that workers aren’t exposed to radiation. If the tailings ponds where the radioactive elements are permanently stored are improperly lined, they can leach into the groundwater. If they are not covered properly, the slurry could dry and escape as dust. And this radioactive waste must be stored for an incomprehensibly long time—the half-life of thorium is about 14 billion years, and uranium’s is up to 4.5 billion years. Reminder: Earth itself is 4.5 billion years old.
Not coincidentally, the refining tends to happen in areas where weak environmental rules mean that companies can process the elements on the cheap. Take the Baotou region of Inner Mongolia, where most of China’s rare-earth mines are clustered, and where waste has leached into waterways and irrigation canals, according to several independent investigations. Communities around one former mine in Mongolia blame at least 66 cancer deaths on leaked radioactive waste, and local people complain that their hair and teeth have fallen out.
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https://www.motherjones.com/files/earths_iphone_630.gif #terres_rares #technologie #radioactivité #santé #cancer #travail
