Hungarian red mud spill did little long-term damage

numerous alarming pollution hotspots where toxins from the mud seemed to be building up, although it also turned out that many of its most concerning components were present in forms that aren’t particularly easy for living things to absorb. Others, though, such as vanadium – a metal suspected of causing cancer — were there in highly concentrated and bioavailable form.

For this latest study they returned and rejoined their Hungarian colleagues to re-test the river sediments at the same places. And even at the worst former pollution hotspots, there was little trace of the red mud.

Mayes says the knowledge gained in the wake of the Ajka spill will help governments deal better with similar events in future.

“This kind of catastrophic environmental event means we gather a lot of information in a short time,” he says. “There hadn’t been any large-scale spill of this material before, so we didn’t really know how it would affect the environment; what we have found out over the last few years means we’re in a far better position to manage these risks in future. It’s just a shame it takes a huge disaster to move things on and make us gain this knowledge.”

Thankfully, the situation in Hungary is not representative of the alumina industry as a whole and the refinery in Hungary is now using more modern technologies that produce drier by-products that reduce the risk of spills. Mayes even has another NERC-funded project looking at recovering valuable metals from aluminum refining waste, such as chromium, vanadium and rare earths; if we could find a way to recover these economically, this would both create a potentially valuable income stream and reduce the waste’s potential environmental impact.

Other NERC-funded researchers including Professor Paul Younger, then of Newcastle University, and scientists from the British Geological Survey also travelled to Hungary after the spill, offering expert advice on the government’s response to the disaster. These included suggestions on how to build an effective retaining wall at the site of the disaster that would prevent any further mud spillage, using modern methods that took account of underground conditions and the way water moves through the earth.

— Read more in Á. D. Anton et al., “Geochemical recovery of the Torna-Marcal river system after the Ajka red mud spill, Hungary,” Environmental Science: Processes and Impacts (2014), DOI: 10.1039/C4EM00452C.

This story is republished courtesy of Planet Earth online, a free, companion Web site to the Planet Earth, published and funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC).