Safe Mining Assessment of Artisanal Barite Mining Activities in Nigeria

Abstract

Barite, used in mud formulation, is mined in several places to support the industry. However, there is insufficient literature on the downside of mining and associated hazards, especially in the artisanal barite mining sector. This paper contains three parts. The initial section reviews major causes of mining accidents and health hazards in Nigeria. The second section examines existing but weak institutional frameworks and policies for artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) in Nigeria. In the third part, data from questionnaires and heavy metal contamination assessment are compared with health and environmental standards to identify and characterize hazards. It was observed that 54% had health challenges traceable to illicit drugs, and 54% were ignorant about the use of safety kits. The UV-Vis, AAS, and ICP-MS analyses confirmed lead, barium, zinc, copper, and iron in the water samples. Index of geoaccumulation (Igeo) and contamination factor (CF) show that water samples are moderate to highly polluted by Pb2+, Ba2+, and highly contaminated. The chronic daily intake assessment and health quotient analysis revealed that the accumulation of lead and barium is possible and can initiate chronic diseases in humans over a long time. Certain safe mining protocols and controls are recommended.

Effects of sand mining on land use/land cover on river environment in developing countries: A case study of Ava River in Enugu State, Nigeria

“…Many studies have investigated LULC classes such as forests (Olofsson et al, 2011;DeFries et al, 2002), deserts (Eklundh and Olsson, 2003), and built-up areas (He et al, 2010;Lizarazo, 2010;Schneider and Woodcock, 2008), shrublands (McManus et al, 2012), waterbodies (Smith et al, 2005) and farmlands (Fuller et al, 2012;Liu et al, 2005). Interest in LULC remains and may be expanded further as a result of major policy-related issues (Olofsson et al, 2013) Various studies such as environmental impact assessment (Adedeji et al, 2014), the volume of sand mined and land degradation (Oladipo et al, 2015;Atejioye and Odeyemi 2018),seasonal variations of physico-chemical parameters (Obot et al, 2019),mining accidents and health hazards, weak government framework and heavy metal contamination (Afolayan et al, 2021), levels of contestation of the resource space, role of government in environmental protection and management and the level of awareness local people have on the environmental impact of sand mining (Nnatuanya, 2021), effective monitoring and postmanagement of sand mining site (Abraham et al, 2021)have been carried out on sand mining activity in different parts of the country.Nevertheless, little attention has been paid to its effect on LULC dynamics using GIS and remote sensing. This study, therefore, focuses on the Ava River environment, which is currently experiencing rapid urbanization and other human activities.…”

Physicochemical Studies for Risk Identification, Assessment, and Characterization of Artisanal Barite Mining in Nigeria

“…Mining and processing of minerals have a significant impact on economic well-being in several ways [1][2][3]. The abundant supply of cheap labor, limited availability of capital, lack of advanced methods and technologies for mineral exploitation, and poor existing transportation networks, together with an urgent demand for minerals both within the continent and abroad, have led to the rapid establishment of mining activities, without due consideration of many types of consequences [4,5]. Nigeria and most countries in Africa have not attained their full potential in hazard and fatality response management in mining due to the lack of capital and technological means to identify mining hazards and to assess and characterize potential risks to human health as is necessary to improve the safety of the miners [4,6,7].…”

“…Barite ore, among others, contains non-barite minerals with associated metals such as Pb, Zn, Sn, Cu, Cd, Fe, and others [9,10]. These elements and compounds constitute a threat to mining communities' health and well-being during mining and mineral processing [4,11]. Huge barite deposits are formed along river beds, and the mined pits are usually submerged with water.…”

“…Such research focused on the determination of ecotoxicity levels in soils, arable crops, vegetables, aquatic lives, and the environment and assessed health hazards due to mining at gold, Pb-Zn-F, coal, granite, silica/sand, Pb, Fe ore, and barite mines [14][15][16][20][21][22][23][24][25][26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33]. However, scientific information about heavy metal contamination and the danger imposed on human lives and the environment due to barite mining is still often unknown and reliable data relatively scarce [4].…”