> "A 2001 National Park Service report documented elevated levels of lead, cadmium, and zinc in vegetation along the road, as well as near the storage area by the port. Concentrations of lead and cadmium, the National Park Service report stated, exceed levels found in “many of the most polluted countries in Central and Eastern Europe and all areas of western Russia.”
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/most-toxi...
Usually mining companies respond by saying that requiring them to implement such solutions ('regulation') is anti-free-market and makes them uncompetitive, as they then have to sell their ore on global markets at higher prices or accept much lower profit margins.
I've never actually seen an industrial pollution problem that didn't have a technical (if sometimes expensive) solution. Making those solutions the norm (kind of like requiring all homes to have toilets, etc.) is the reason why regulation is a good idea, it flattens the markets so noone can undersell using dirty methods.
It's the environmental version of the trolley car problem, except you have an unknown number of people on each part of the train tracks.
Is it a 1:10 offset, where (holistically speaking) the zinc mine will cause 10x environmental damage as it prevents? Then maybe it shouldn't happen anywhere.
Is it 1:1 offset and we're merely insisting that the environmental damage should happen in a poorer country instead of our own?
Is it 10:1 or 100:1 where every kilogram of zinc means that's 10kg or 100kg of steel that won't prematurely rust and need to be replaced, with another 10kg of 100kg of iron ore being mined elsewhere and transported at great environmental cost to replace it? Then from an environmental standpoint it's a huge win and we should probably do it.
It's extremely difficult to know.
But if mining zinc lowers pollution from other stuff then yes.
Like pushing our pollution into the developing world is both immoral and harmful to our economy.