Mining Historian Rick Stewart examines the region’s production of the notoriously toxic heavy metal
When alternative and cheaper sources of copper were found in Chile, South Africa and Australia in the 1860s, many mines faced ruin, but some were rescued by switching to the production of arsenic, for which there was then an increasing demand. Some of it was recovered by reworking spoil tips, and while not toxic to mining underground, arsenic becomes highly toxic when it crystallizes on the walls of calciners. Workers were sent into these calciners to chip arsenic from their walls protected only by a scarf over the mouth and nose. In the 1880s, Devon Great Consols was the largest arsenic producer in the world. With the fall in the price of arsenic in 1902-3, however, the mining industry collapsed, never to recover.
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