Mining Pit Silver Lake in Germany

Covering of the "Silver Lake" near Wolfen with a biological filter. The "Silver Lake" is an abandoned strip mining pit that has not been sealed and it contains large amounts of mercury.

In original language:

Abdeckung des "Silbersee"

Abdeckung des "Silbersee" mit Biokontaktfiltern. Der "Silbersee" bei Wolfen ist hochgradig mit Quecksilber verseucht.

Unique identifier: GP02T2D

Type: Image

Shoot date: 05/10/1995

Locations: Europe, Germany, Wolfen

Credit line: © Paul Langrock / Greenpeace

Size: 5356px × 3540px 14MB

Ranking: ★★★★ (E)

Containers

Shoot:

Mining Pit Silver Lake in Germany

The "Silver Lake" is an environmental scandal without precedence. It is a strip mining pit that has not been sealed and that is presumably in contact with the groundwater.
This pit serves literally as the sedimentation basin for untreated water from pulp and viscose production in Wolfen before it flows into the Spittel and subsequently the Mulde. Since chlorine bleaching is used in Wolfen, it seemed reasonable to assume that deposits in the sludge of the pit included dioxins and other chlorinated hydrocarbons. Therefore, Greenpeace took a sludge sample and had it analysed: At 25 to 70 nanograms of dioxin (expressed as the toxicity equivalent, TE) per kilogram dry substance, the sludge does contain increased amounts of dioxin but not of the order that would alone require an immediate cleanup. The same is true for the chlorobenzenes and chlorophenols. Nevertheless, these loads must certainly be taken seriously. The heavy metal content (zinc, lead, arsenic, cadmium, chromium, copper, nickel and mercury) of the "Silver Lake", however, currently calls to mind
that of a coal mine and should be immediately eliminated.

Conceptually similar