Metallisation and environmental management of mining site soils

The present paper deals with the issue of technogenic metallisation of mining site soils and the biosphere as a whole. The natural biosphere metallisation has probably started long ago. It is connected with destruction of small areas with anomalously high content of metals in rocks and further migration of the released metals in the neighbouring biosphere areas. As a result, their content increases in a much larger area, although only slightly. This concentration increase can capture the pedosphere, hydrosphere, atmosphere, and living matter. As a result of deposit mining conducted by people, the enrichment of several biosphere parts with metals occurs much more intense and takes far greater areas than the natural metallisation. The metallisation began to have a negative impact on many living organisms, including humans. Therefore, the study and the role of this process from a purely geochemical moved into environmental. The investigation of topsoil pollution was conducted in mining areas of Russia, Kazakhstan, and Ukraine. The emission spectral analyses of thousands of samples showed that the dominant contemporary way of remediation at mining and beneficiation areas does not prevent a metal spread through the decades. The proposed insulation method allows preventing environmental pollution by using polyethylene and polypropylene wastes. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.