Heavy metal contamination from mining sites

Heavy metals are natural elements found in the Earth's crust. Unfortunately, human activities such as mining had eventually altered the biochemical balance and geochemical cycles of these metals. As a result, the metals started to accumulate in soils and plant parts thus giving adverse effects towards environment when the metals react with the plants having secondary metabolites. Extensively exposure to heavy metals such as arsenic, zinc, nickel, lead and copper are able to lead to dangerous human' s health effects. This research is done in order to briefly describe and explain about the mining process, to identify the types of heavy metals produced due to mining and to understand the route of heavy metal transportation from the tailings to soils and ecosystems and its effects to others. A few places have been studied on the heavy metal contamination. The places chosen are the worst occurring heavy metal contamination areas. The case study of each place is briefly explained about the area involved, way that the contamination occurs, mining methods and its effect to the environment. The places chosen mine different types of worthwhile minerals example coal mining, gold mining, bauxite mining, tin mining and copper mining. The results for every case study and literature review done show that mining had been giving serious impacts to the humans, plants, animals and environment thus serious action needs to be taken in order to reduce the impacts in the future.