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20/02/20

Dam disaster risk means independent reviews a must: researchers

ibama的Brumadinho
At many points along its course, the Paraopeba River has become unusable for fishing or as a water supply. Copyright:Felipe Werneck/Ibama[CC BY-SA 2.0].

Speed read

  • Risk of future dam disasters remains high in Brazil
  • Paraopeba River health still compromised after Brumadinho tailings dam collapse
  • beplay足球体育的微博灾难后的环境研究需要为决策者获得高质量的数据

By:罗德里戈·德·奥利维拉·安德拉德

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[SÃO PAULO] Independent scientific reviews of miningdisasters帮助当局避免未来catastr至关重要ophes.
This is one of the lessons learned after the collapse of a tailings dam at Brumadinho in southeast Brazil, in January 2019. Tons of mud and iron ore poured into Paraopeba River, which was the18beplay官网 source for the area.
The rupture of the tailings dam was one of the region’s worst socio-environmental disasters, killing over 270 people and affecting 40,000 nearby residents. It drastically increased heavy metals in the Paraopeba River, and destroyed large areas of Atlantic Forest and protected areas along its watercourses.
“Independent studies are important because they tend to be an impartial source of information, which may be consulted both by decision-makers and the affected population,” Alex Bastos, a geologist at Espírito Santo Federal University (Ufes), tellsSciDev.Net.

“Every environmental study after a high impact event is important to generate data for decision-makers with impartial and quality information.”

Alex Bastos – Espírito Santo Federal University, Brazil

“Many data may be generated, but if the population is not aware of them and do not believe in the results, there is an escalation of conflicts, so it is not only a matter of carrying out independent studies, but also of creating a data management and communication model capable of properly informing the population affected by this sort of disaster.”

Presa de Brumadinho by IBAMA.jpg
The collapse of the Brumadinho dam was one of the worst socio-environmental tragedies in Brazil.
版权：Brazilian Environment Institute (伊巴马) [CC BY-NC-SA 2.0].


To Vivian de Mello Cionek, a biologist at the State University of Santa Catarina, independent studies provide scientific bases to better assess the environmental impacts of dam failures and the lack of safety culture in risky operations.

For Cybelle Longhini, a biologist at Ufes, studies of mining disasters are “important to understand the responses of huge metal contamination at the ecosystem level, and the results can guide future studies for management and conservation strategies of the affected areas”.
Bastos says every environmental study after a high impact event is important to create impartial and high quality data for decision-makers.

“The role of the public universities at a time of serious environmental disaster is to support public authorities and the population in order to be a source of information that can be consulted and considered impartial,” he says.


An unusable river and an ongoing catastrophe

Brumadinho灾难一周后,研究team from the State University of Northern Rio de Janeiro carried out biogeochemical, microbiological and ecotoxicological analyses across 464km of Paraopeba River.

Their research was published in the February issue of Science of the Total Environment and tallies with other reports on the need for independent impact studies.
The researchers found that immediately after the tailings dam failure, the river’s water quality was 30 times lower than the Brazilian Resolution for Water Quality standard.
汞值高达可接受的水平21倍。汞是一种可能对环境，人类和动物有害的有毒金属。beplay足球体育的微博
When they repeated these tests four months later, the quality parameters showed that water from the Paraopeba was still dangerous for human use and even for fishing.
The team also found a 60-fold increase in iron tolerant bacterial at a point 115 km downstream of the dam failure, which indicates that the ore tailings stimulated the growth of pathogenic and toxic microbes.

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“It also suggests that waters are highly toxic and may pose a threat to public health” Omar Yazbek Bitar,a geologist at the Institute of Technological Research in São Paulo, tellsSciDev.Net.
For Bastos, the study is important because it presents simple data that shows that the river’s health is compromised, and that the impacts are not over yet.
Studies carried out by SOS Mata Atlântica Foundation in January, at 21 points along 356km of the riverbed, found that the river remains contaminated and that, due to high rainfall, heavy metals had washed downstream.

Bastos says the extent of the impacts of the dam collapse may still be unknown.

Paraopeba By Diego Baravelli
这就是paraopeba河的样子，在大量的泥土和尾矿倒入水域后的一年。

Researchers also observed a high mortality level of zebrafish embryo across the study area.

尾矿的大坝故障曾经被认为是巴西的罕见事件，但是自2015年以来，两次铁尾矿灾难袭击了米纳斯·格拉斯（Minas Gerais）的状态，米纳斯·格拉斯（Minas Gerais）的资源提取不良。

The risk of future dam disasters remains high. A 2018Annual Dam Reportwarned that 45 Brazilian dams are at high risk of failure, including five mining tailings dams.

Part of the study published in Science of The Total Environment was carried out at the Centre for Research on Toxins, Immune Response and Cell Signalling, supported by FAPESP, a donor of SciDev.Net.