Soil pollution is a problem all around the world unfortunately – it causes problems for the environment, plants and animals as well as the people who live in a polluted area. There are many causes of soil pollution, and it takes a professional like this soil remediation company https://soilfix.co.uk/services/soil-remediation to get it cleaned up – but there are some parts of the world that are so very polluted and have a toxic legacy that is difficult to overcome – one of these places is La Oroya in Peru.
The town that is high in the Andes mountains was founded in the late 1800s where it was used as a mineral processing town. The railway was built connecting it to Lima and this meant that it was easy to transport materials and mining and smelting in the town was the main source of income and the town grew.
Unfortunately, however, despite the fact that this did bring money to the town this came at a huge sacrifice – the smelting complex released huge amounts of toxic smoke, laden with heavy metals and toxic substances like lead, cadmium, and sulphur dioxide into the atmosphere where it then settled into the local environment – getting into water, landing on farmland and even into homes.
Animals and plants were dying, rivers were discoloured and people were getting ill. Unfortunately, heavy metals in soil do not break down over time, and they are building up day by day. Children were particularly vulnerable to this and health studies revealed shocking levels of lead in the blood of the children which causes lots of health issues.
Since this, there have been efforts to clean the place up and improve it, however cleaning an area that is this large and this polluted takes a lot of time and a lot of money – nowadays it is a reminder to the world that putting profit over the environment is catastrophic.
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