vacuum_everyday t1_j8lluyu wrote on February 15, 2023 at 5:05 AM

Reply to comment by sdb_drus in TIL The Bingham Canyon Mine in Utah is almost 4000 feet deep (that's 3X as tall as the Empire State Building). It's the largest man-made excavation and the deepest open-pit mine in the world. It's also visible to the naked eye from space. by lqwertyd

The Utah Physicians for a Healthy Environment, here’s the link https://www.uphe.org/priority-issues/rio-tinto-kennecott/.

And the Daybreak source are friends who were original Daybreak owners from the mid 2000s. The rules might have changed, but per the Salt Lake Tribune, the ground water below the city is heavily contaminated (estimated for the next 40-100 years) with heavy metals as Daybreak is a former tailings pond. The Deseret News did an interesting piece on a cancer cluster in residents around the Daybreak development. They claim Daybreak is safe, but it still will always be an EPA Superfund site. Obviously developers will bury anything that gets in the way of money. But I don’t think it’s prudent to say there will be zero consequences.

sdb_drus t1_j8mgjy3 wrote on February 15, 2023 at 11:48 AM

Thanks for sharing. Common sense says that Kennecott's a big polluter and not something you want in your backyard, regardless of exactly where those numbers land.

FWIW, DEQ claims that point sources (eg, industrial operations) of PM2.5 (main pollutant during inversion) are about 13% of the total with about 50% coming from mobile sources (vehicles). This is part of the reason why I think the 30% number seems way overblown.

I've experienced health problems and been misdiagnosed with asthma multiple times because of issues triggered by the bad air over the past few years in particular, so I don't underestimate the effects of it at all.