Beach Sand Mining Causes No Cancer: Researchers From The Regional Cancer Centre (RCC)

Beach Sand Mining Causes No Cancer: Researchers From The Regional Cancer Centre (RCC)

In a news report published on The Hindu, it has been implied that the natural radioactive minerals found on the southern coastline of India particularly in Kerala and Tamil Nadu do not cause excess cancer risk to people living in the area. Monazite, which is a radioactive mineral found in these beaches is

abundantly available yet not utilized by the miners in India.

The government only allows government mining agencies to extract this mineral. The Coast line of Kerala has the rich monazite content (roughly 2%) whereas rest of the coastline like Orissa, Tamil Nadu, Andra Pradesh only has about (0.1 0.3%) which is hardly any.

VV Mineral which is a private mining company owned by S. Vaikundarajan mainly deals with rare earth’s mining. They primarily conduct mining, garnet mining, ilmenite mining and rutile mining. But they do not conduct Monazite mining.

Monazite is mined only by Indian Rare Earths Limited (IREL) which is a government agency. The commercial importance of Monazite is much higher than the other heavy minerals found in this area.

The Managing Director of the company, Mr. Vaikundarajan Subramanian recently spoke about how if the government allows private miners who have the appropriate funds and infrastructural assets will lead to better financial gains. He mentioned the hardships faced by the private mining companies that have to adhere to strict rules and abide by the painstakingly long grants and clearances. Unless the government improves this, the precious minerals like monazite will always be wasted.

He stated that India has a huge reserve, one of the largest for minerals like ilmenite, however, a very miniscule portion of this is actually converted into national profits. 278 million tons

of titanium dioxide reserves out of the total 460 million tons lie in India.

In another news article featured on Economic Times it is mentioned that because Indian Government does not allow private players to invest and conduct business in global Monazite industry there is no scope of growth for India. Due to lack of funds from the government the mining company is not able to explore mining expansion plans, whereas, the private mining companies are not allowed to do so, even after having the necessary funds for it.

Some of the facts mentioned in the interview include how the country loses forex amounting to Rs. 10,000 Crore due to an industry shut down since August 2012. He also mentioned how the 10% export duty on heavy mineral mining is affecting the income levels of the manufacturers in India, which allows other countries who have lower export duties to flourish more.

Now since it is clear that this mineral has no adverse cancer related effects, ideally there should be some amendments in the mining rules and private mining companies should be allowed to explore this field which will not only benefit them but also the state and nations economy.

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