BOLIVIA: Contaminants from San Jose mine in Oruro, Bolivia affect residents living nearby

Record ID: 216918

  • Title: BOLIVIA: Contaminants from San Jose mine in Oruro, Bolivia affect residents living nearby
  • Date: 31st January 2010
  • Summary: VIEW OF MINE WASTE FROM SCHOOL
  • Embargoed: 15th February 2010 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Topics: Health,Industry
  • Reuters ID: LVA9ABI7SJ2YLW2SK43QNLPEEM1I
  • Story Text: Deep in the cool, damp tunnels of Oruro , Bolivia 's San Jose mine, miners take a break from their daily toil, paying their respects and asking for safety from the spirits with offerings of alcohol and coca leaves.
    Miners in these tunnels rarely last more than 15 years because of their prolonged, close contact with pollutants, but a new study shows it's not just those who work in the bowels of the mountain that need protection from the dangers of the mine, but also people living nearby.
    Founded in 1952, the San Jose mine in Oruro was run for three and a half decades by the Bolivian government. The mine, a rich source of silver and tin, fell prey to drops in mineral prices in the 1970s and fell into decline, eventually closing in 1987.
    Now, seven mining cooperatives made up of some 12,000 people, extract minerals using primitive pick and shovel techniques.
    Many of these miners and their families have settled in two neighborhoods along the mine's slope.
    Omar Kenneth Escalier, an engineer who works for one of the cooperatives known as 'Jesus' Heart', said there a numerous ways contaminants reach families.
    "On an average, the mining families are made up of five people: husband, wife and three children. The miner carries dust and gases in his lungs and passes them on to his family by breathing," he said.
    Decades-old tailings are scattered haphazardly throughout the mine, leeching arsenic, cadmium, nickel and lead into the soil and the water.
    Without taking into account health risks to people who live in and around the mine, developers have gone ahead with urbanization planning around the mine, putting in streets, sidewalks, electricity and running water.
    For the family's living next to the mine, the contact is direct. Dump trucks, heavy machinery and winds whip up toxic dust that drifts into homes.
    Teofila Flores Condori, the 87-year-old widow of a former miner, tries to keep the dust down in her home close to the mine, where she lives with her grandchildren.
    "We can't live like this. There is a lot of dust everywhere," she said.
    Experts from Bolivia 's San Andres University ran a study on mothers and their children at a school district at the foot of the mine. Not far from the school's front door sits a massive tailing pile with 2.4 tons of waste left from seven decades of mining.
    Students use the toxic mound as a playground or cross it while walking home.
    Marilyn Aparicio, a neurologist specializing in environmental issues, headed the study, saying many students inherited toxin levels high enough to slow their development.
    "Their nervous systems, had they developed under normal circumstances, would have had a very high capacity. Conversely, they have less capacity from what they should have had because of the toxins. This produces a country with young people with lower mental and physical capabilities who are less able to contribute to the development of the country," Aparicio said.
    Locals call this heavily contaminated mine runoff 'copajira', or 'blood of the earth' in the native Aymara language.
    The water, which gives off an acrid smell, is perhaps the most overt sign of contamination at the mine, where the Aparicio's study found plants and animals in the area had 500 times more toxins than accepted levels by the World Health Organization (WHO).
    Rains send the 'copajira' running through neighborhoods and into other parts of Oruro .
    Food vendor Marta Andrade de Martinez, who was selling chicken soup close to the mine, said the vapors alone from the water give her problems.
    "When it rains, the mineral gives off a vapor that gives me bad asthma. The water is very acidic," she said.
    But Bolivia is South America's poorest nation and the Andean plateau where Oruro sits is especially poor. Many don't have any other choice but to work the mines and ignore the dangers of pollution.
    "It's their only way of subsisting and they don't have anywhere else to live. However, there is some resistance to believing that this contamination is really dangerous," Aparicio said.
    Regulations used by the U.S. government«s Envinromental Protection Agency (EPA) put safe levels of arsenic at 50 milligrams per gram of creatine, but mothers around the mine averaged nearly 730 milligrams.
    Levels of lead, nickel and cadium are similar.
    Aparicio made a shocking comparison to describe the scope of health problems caused by the mine.
    "In the case of Chernobyl , the contamination was radioactive. Here, we have different kinds of problems that are similar. The water, the air, the children, the plants and animals are contaminated. This is an area of great contamination and I don't think it's the only one in the country," she said.
    Bolivian President Evo Morales put in a petition two years ago for a holistic study on the effects of the mine, but it hasn't yet been put in motion.
    Gerardo Coro, the vice minister of mining, said it's not likely the mine will be shut down.
    "This is a mining country where we have exploited only 20 percent of our resources. We still have 80 percent. Paralyzing a mining operation will be impossible, but we're going to see how we can fight contamination," he said.
    Meanwhile, the some 70 percent of the population around the San Jose mine contaminated by pollutants will keep growing.
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