Copper, 116 mining, 5 smelting

Central America and Caribbean 316, 520-3 Europe and Turkey 505-9 South America 316, 522 -3 USA 316, 513-19 see also under drinking water coordination number 10, 12 copper arsenate 281 copper mines/smelting 115, 164,404 history of 278... 

Some fugitive particulate emissions occur around copper mines, concentrating, and smelting facilities, but the greatest concern is with emissions from the ore preparation, smelting, and refining processes. Table 30-9 gives the emissions of SO2 from the smelters. 

Copper discharges to the global biosphere are due primarily to human activities, especially mining, smelting, and refining copper and the treatment and recycling of municipal and industrial wastes. Some copper compounds, especially copper sulfate, also contribute to environmental copper burdens because they are widely and intensively used in confined geographic areas to control nuisance species of aquatic plants and invertebrates, diseases of terrestrial crop plants, and ectoparasites of fish and livestock. 

Cobalt is also found in seawater, meteorites, and other ores such as linnaeite, chloanthite, and smaltite, and traces are found mixed with the ores of silver, copper, nickel, zinc, and manganese. Cobalt ores are found in Canada and parts of Africa, but most of the cobalt used in the United States is recovered as a by-product of the mining, smelting, and refining of the ores of iron, nickel, lead, copper, and zinc. 

In about 3600 bce, ores containing both arsenic and copper were known and mined by the early Greeks and Romans, as well as by Chinese alchemists. This is about the time when copper was smelted and alloyed to make bronze. Some ores of copper produced harder metals than others because of impurities. One of these impurities was arsenic. Because the workers were becoming ill when smelting these types of ore, the process was abandoned, and tin was added to copper to form bronze. Bronze may have been the Persian (Iranian) word for copper. ... 

In 1934 Rabbi Glueck excavated a site a few miles south of the Dead Sea and discovered King Solomon s copper mines. Four years later he excavated a site near the Gulf of Aqabah (the Ezion-Geber of the Bible) and discovered an ancient copper mine that is now being worked by Israeli miners (267, 279). Copper mining and smelting sites have also been found in Sinai (89). 

Humans have been exposed more and more to metallic contaminants in the environment, mostly from the products of industry. There are three main sources of metals in the environment. The most obvious are the processes of extraction and purification mining, smelting, and refining. Another is the release of metals from fossil fuels (e.g., coal, oil), when these are burned. Cadmium, lead, mercury, nickel, vanadium, chromium, and copper are all present in these fuels, and considerable amounts enter the air or are deposited in ash. The third and most diverse source is the production and use of industrial products containing metals, which is increasing as new applications are found. The modem chemical industry, for example, uses many metals or metal compounds as catalysts metal compounds are used as stabilizers in the production of many plastics, and metals are added to lubricants, which then find their way into the environment.21... 

Craddock, in a comprehensive paper on medieval and west African bronze analysis, has clearly pointed out the inherent dangers of interpretation of analytical data for copper or copper-based alloys in terms of provenience. Provenancing metal from its composition has always proved immensely difficult even for the ancient Near East and Europe where one can normally assume that the metal has been mined, smelted, fabricated, used and discarded within the same society. In the case of West Africa where the bulk of the metal came from a wide variety of undifferentiated sources which were far distant and technically superior, the task of interpreting the metal analyses becomes all the more fraught with difficulty. In copper provenancing studies generally three assumptions have to be made ... 

Despite these warnings of Craddock, which also apply to other mined and smelted metals like silver and iron, there have been serious attempts to glean locational information from analytical data. Berthoud, in his thesis research and in a paper published with several collaborators using plasma emission and spark source mass spectroscopy, analyzed the multivariate compositional data of copper ores from more than 25 copper mines in Iran, that would have been important in early (4th and 3rd millennium) metallurgy. Their feeling was that the Craddock Assumption 1) was satisfied well enough and furthermore that it was possible to trace certain 4th millennium objects from Susa to a native copper source at Talmessi. Of course, with native copper, Craddock Assumptions 2) and 3) were not tested. 

Mitsui Mining Smelting Co., Ltd. (MMS) is a general non-ferrous metal enterprise which originated its business from mining and smelting. At present, its spectrum of business activities covers not only the production of zinc, lead, copper and other materials but also it has extended its applications to the production of rolled copper products, synthetic chemical products, electric circuit materials (electrolytic copper foil), PVD (physical vapour deposition) materials, battery materials, ceramics, rare metals, rare earth and automotive components. 

Kot et al. (2009) traced the halo of Hg s dissipation in copper mines under arid conditions, at El Boleo mining district near Santa Rosalia in east-central Baja Califomia, Mexico (27°24 -27 40 N and 112 22 -112 24 W). In this region, copper mining and smelting operations were abundant during the period 1885-1985. They found that marine sediments near Santa Rosalia are affected by material... 

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