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MERCURY IN METAL ORE DEPOSITS: AN UNRECOGNIZED, WIDESPREAD SOURCE TO LAKE SUPERIOR SEDIMENTS, CONTRIBUTION #1072
Citation:
Kerfoot, W. C., S. L. Harting, R. Rossmann, AND J. A. Robbins. MERCURY IN METAL ORE DEPOSITS: AN UNRECOGNIZED, WIDESPREAD SOURCE TO LAKE SUPERIOR SEDIMENTS, CONTRIBUTION #1072.
Description:
Mining operations have worked the rich mineral resources of the Lake Superior Basin for over 150 years, leaving industrially impacted regions with tailing piles and smelters. In Lake Superior sediments, mercury and copper inventories increase towards shorelines and are highly correlated with each other and with silver inventories, suggestive of fine particle transport from terrigenous sources. In the Keweenaw Peninsula region, high copper, silver, and mercury inventories can be traced back to shoreline tailing piles, the parent ores and to smelters. Mercury occurs as a natural amalgam in native metal (copper, silver, gold) deposits and was liberated as volatile Hg degrees during on-site smelting. Stamp mills discharged 0.5 billion metric tons of "stamp sand" tailings, while smelters refined five million tons of native copper. Although silver-enriched native copper deposits in the Keweenaw Peninsula contain relatively high amounts of mercury, mineral-bound mercury is commomplace in Canadian and U.S. Greenstone Belt metal ores. Moreover, a survey of mine samples from around the globe documents worldwide occurrence of mercury as a atrace metal in massive base metal ore bodies.