Sustainable Mining and Metallurgy

Taking a retired lead smelter as the research object, through investigating the historical changes of plots, process flow, pollution production links and site reconnaissance, appropriate sampling points were selected to conduct pollution investigation on soil, groundwater, waste residue and surface attachments of structures.Revealed by pollution survey results, the soil pollution exceedance factors are arsenic, lead, cadmium, mercury and antimony, while groundwater pollution exceedance factors include arsenic, cadmium, nickel, antimony, lead, zinc, thallium, cobalt, beryllium and other heavy metals and fluoride. This is related to pollutant discharge, leak and spill, fugitive matters as well as unplanned landfill of slags and other activities in historical production process. The risk assessment results show that arsenic, cadmium, mercury and lead are higher than the risk control limit of the site soil, exceeding the acceptable level and posing health risks. The recommended remediation targets for arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury and antimony are 60mg/kg, 79.6mg/kg, 1327mg/kg, 38mg/kg and 180mg/kg respectively.