Mining Impacts · impact
Sulfur dioxide emissions
Air · During operation
- Mitigation
- Capture as sulfuric acid — now standard and usually sold — plus scrubbing and continuous stack monitoring.
- Category
- Air
- Timescale
- During operation
Case
Smelting at Sudbury, Ontario denuded a landscape large enough to be visible from orbit; capture, a 381 m stack and a regreening programme running since 1978 have reversed much of it.
Mechanism
Roasting and smelting sulfide ores drives off sulfur as sulfur dioxide. Released untreated it acidifies rain downwind, strips foliage and acidifies soils and lakes across an area far larger than the plant.
Open on the Mining Impacts shelf — the interactive card, the filters, and everything alongside it.