Environmental Research Needs of Metal Mining

Mining provides the metals that society needs, but it's a challenge to produce metals with minimum environmental impact. It's not just future impacts that companies are dealing with, but remediating inherited problems as well. However, multidisciplinary research is providing the foundation for new, cost-effective solutions. This booklet copublished with the American Geological Institute results from many discussions with environmental professionals involved in clean-ups at their companies' mining-related Superfund sites. Their experiences point to five top-priority environmental problems that deserve research efforts to find better answers.