Communicable Disease Research Laboratory, St. Joseph's College, Irinjalakuda, India.
Communicable Disease Research Laboratory, St. Joseph's College, Irinjalakuda, India; Department of Zoology, Christ College, Irinjalakuda, University of Calicut, India.
J Hazard Mater. 2021 Jan 15;402:123474. doi: 10.1016/j.jhazmat.2020.123474. Epub 2020 Jul 24.
Minerals are valuable resources gifted to man from the Mother Earth and quite often they need to be dug out from deep down with much effort to utilize them in many of our anthropogenic activities. The fascinating nature, colours as well as the physicochemical properties of minerals has extended their prospective value in the synthesis of various household and industrial products. However, knowledge of the mostly explored minerals, associated products, and their hazardous nature becomes relevant to its prevalence in our daily life. The harmful effects of some minerals are mostly evident from its site of occurrence, process of mining, post mining wastes left over and even in finished products. The current review focuses to evaluate the hazardous nature of minerals, cautions associated with its mining, drastic effects on human health, and ecosystem as an eye-opener to us. Finally, the effective remedies that could be implemented in the exploration of minerals are also discussed to the best of our knowledge. Bioleaching methods of rare earth elements and copper have been discussed briefly to explain the pros and cons of biological methods over conventional chemical leaching methods.
矿物质是大自然赋予人类的宝贵资源，它们常常需要经过艰苦的挖掘才能从地下深处开采出来，以便在我们的许多人为活动中加以利用。矿物质的迷人性质、颜色以及物理化学特性，扩展了它们在各种家庭和工业产品合成中的应用前景。然而，对于那些已经被广泛开采的矿物质、相关产品及其危害性的了解，与它们在我们日常生活中的普遍存在息息相关。一些矿物质的有害影响主要从其产生的地点、采矿过程、采矿后的废弃物，甚至是最终产品中显现出来。本综述旨在评估矿物质的危害性，以及在采矿过程中需要注意的事项，对人类健康和生态系统的巨大影响，以引起我们的关注。最后，我们还根据现有知识讨论了在勘探矿物质时可以采取的有效补救措施。此外，还简要讨论了生物浸出法提取稀土元素和铜的方法，以说明生物方法相对于传统化学浸出方法的优缺点。
