Facilities in Utah manage and release hundreds of millions of pounds of arsenic, lead, selenium, mercury and other toxic chemicals every year, according to federal data.
Those chemicals are tracked as part of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Toxic Release Inventory, or TRI — and some of them can damage the brain and nervous system, cause insomnia and cause cancer.
Based on the most recent report, facilities in Utah released 181.8 million pounds of toxic chemicals into the environment in 2022 as part of production-related waste. That could mean sending them to landfills or tailings ponds, where facilities gather and dispose of crystals left behind as water evaporates.
That’s the fourth most of any state, behind Texas, Nevada and Alaska.
More than 80% of the toxic chemicals released in Utah came from one source: Kennecott Utah Copper’s Bingham Canyon Mine and the associated smelter. The Rio Tinto-owned mine produces copper used in electric motors and power lines, tellurium for solar panels and, in smaller quantities, such other precious metals as gold and silver.
The facility with the next-biggest releases was Clean Harbors, a hazardous waste company, with 14.35 million pounds at one facility and 3.46 million pounds at another.
Because the Bingham Canyon Mine moves “millions of tons” of dirt and rock a year with “naturally occurring trace levels of metals” reportable to the federal government, the facility is a big TRI contributor, according to a statement sent by Tammy Champo, spokesperson for Rio Tinto Kennecott.
Those releases are “safely stored in specifically sited, engineered, constructed and permitted facilities,” Champo said, including tailings ponds just north of Magna and east of The Great Saltair.
Sometimes, though, those chemicals make it into the surrounding environment.
Dr. Brian Moench, president of Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, said those don’t end up connecting directly to a toe tag saying “Rio Tinto did this” or a footprint linking a heart attack to the chemicals.
“But given all the pollution and the toxins, we know some of these can be directly attributed to that,” Moench said. “We just don’t know exactly which ones.”
Many of the toxic releases by the Bingham Canyon Mine are known carcinogens, like arsenic, asbestos, cadmium and nickel compounds, according to the National Cancer Institute.
Lead and lead compounds are the mine’s largest toxic releases.
Lead exposure, according to the EPA, damages the brain and nervous system, especially in children six years and younger, leading to lower IQs, and there’s no safe level of lead in blood for children.
Adults experiencing lead exposure are at greater risk of high blood pressure, reproductive issues and nerve disorders from lead exposure.
The mine also releases mercury, a harmful neurotoxin that the EPA says can lead to emotional changes, insomnia, headaches and inhibited mental function when inhaled.
These toxic releases have a compounding effect, Moench said, as cumulative exposure to harmful chemicals in the air and water builds each year.
Though toxic chemicals can cause major damage to the environment and people, the U.S. has “some of the best mine reclamation and management” to prevent that as far as written policies go, said Doug Sims, dean of the School of Science, Engineering and Mathematics at the College of Southern Nevada.
“Are they always followed? Most of the time,” he said. “But failures happen.”
Sims has worked with mines in Utah and northern Nevada, and said they’re “really run well” and have good environmental and health and safety departments that pay attention to cracks and leaks.
“They haven’t had any big-time catastrophes,” Sims said, but they do need to make sure they’re monitoring systems correctly.
Part of that includes federal requirements like reporting releases of chemicals in the TRI, which facilities were required to do for 2023 by July 1, 2024.
Rio Tinto decreased toxic releases between 2021 and 2022 at the mine and smelter and is actively working to keep reducing releases of TRI-reportable chemicals, Champo said.
Efforts include:
Expanded application of dust suppressants and road grading to reduce dust emissions.
Capture of 99.9% of the sulfur during the smelting process after capital investments.
Remediation of historically contaminated soil to specifically sited, engineered and permitted facilities.
Larger payload capacity haul trucks with higher efficiency engines to reduce tailpipe emissions.
Megan Banta is The Salt Lake Tribune’s data enterprise reporter, a philanthropically supported position. The Tribune retains control over all editorial decisions.
