Avonmouth Smelter

Two significant changes have been the introduction of air supplied helmets, and at some smelters, the banning of smoking. The Cockle Creek smelter became a non-smoking site in 1992 and the Avonmouth smelter in 1995. 

It must be settled whether this approach is sensitive or insensitive towards nonphysiological distributions and amounts of heavy metals, not the least for the sake of biomonitoring. There are data on heavy metal (Zn, Cd, Cu, Pb) accumulation in litter and different soil layers and in plants of some oak woodland next to a metal smelter (Avonmouth near River Severn) in Great Britain (Martin and Bullock 1994). The concentrations in the litter layer are (in xg/kg) Cd 60, Cu about 170, Pb and Zn around 3,000. As usual for these metals except of Zn, where BCF 1 is a normal value, the concentrations of the four metals in photosynthetic organs of oak Quercus robur, other trees and scrubs and the fern Dryopteris are considerably lower than in supporting soils. In this restricted set of metal data, there are pairs of identical soil-leaf BCF only for Quercus robur (Zn, Cd BCF = 0.045) and Dryopteris spp. (Cd, Cu BCF about 0.13) the former corresponds to Ej (L) = -0.28 V, the latter to very similar -0.29 V. 

The development of the mine to produce bulk concentrates and the need for assured outlets for a major part of its ouq>ut led to the decision of Mount Isa Mines Ltd. to acquire the Avonmouth and Duisburg ISP smelters. 

It is of interest to note that during 1976 the arithmetic mean lead content of lead works emissions examined by HM Alkali Inspectorate was 0.011 g mT. It was also noted in the report of the Inspectorate [7] that at the Avonmouth primary lead-zinc-cadmium smelter of Commonwealth Smelting Ltd. (with a capacity of 40 000 tonne of lead annually), emission of lead was about 4 kg h in 1976, compared with a consent limit of 5.4 kg h . ... 

England, specifically for use with bulk concentrates. The first full size fiimace was commissioned at Avonmouth in 1959. Fifteen ISP smelters are now in operation in 12 countries (if 5 plants in Romania, Poland and China are included), and new smelters are planned for construction in Japan and Thailand (see Appendix B for details). 

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