British Geologocal Society: Endangered Metal Risk List

To coincide with the British Science Festival, the British Geological Survey (BGS) has today released a new ‘Risk List’ which ranks the risk to global supply of chemical elements of economic value.


The list highlights vulnerable elements where global production is concentrated in a small number of countries, including metals which are critical to development of a low-carbon digital economy.

The British Geological Survey (BGS) has compiled a "risk list" of elements assessing the precariousness of our supplies.

The study examines the scarcity of each element in Earth's crust, how many countries produce it and the political stability of those countries. It says supplies of antimony, tungsten, mercury and the platinum group of elements are most endangered.

The problem is even more acute than that of the "rare-earth" elements used to make many consumer electronics goods, which hit the headlines earlier this year when power hungry China, the world's biggest acquirer of stocks, sites and companies that mine rare earth elements, blocked exports to the International market to restrict competition and boost pricing.

The risk list helps to focus future research on diversifying supply from new resources, using greener production technologies and cost effective recycling.

The new digital and environmental technologies on which we will rely to deliver a prosperous, low carbon economy often contain metals which have previously been of little interest to man. These ‘critical metals’ – the celebrities of the periodic table – are completely intertwined with modern life, present in thousands of products and increasingly indispensable.

The Risk List 2011 will be released to coincide with the ‘Metals, Mines & Mobiles’ event at the British Science Festival on the 12th September 2011 at the University of Bradford.

The panel of experts at the event will examine the life cycle of technology metals and includes Professor Frances Wall (CSM), Andrew Bloodworth (BGS), Dr Alan McLelland (NAMTEC) and Dr Paul Mitchell (Director, GreenHorizons Environmental Consultants Ltd.)

Download the risk list by clicking on the picture or from www.mineralsuk.com

Icelandic Tectonic Plate activity may trigger Katla

As scientists and air travellers alike keep a close eye on Iceland's ongoing volcanic eruption, some reports suggest that another, much bigger, volcano could stir in the near future.

Katla is Eyjafjallajokull's more active neighbour, and scientists believe that there may be a link between the two volcanoes.

This link has not been physically proven, explains Magnus Tumi Gudmundsson a geophysicist from the University of Iceland.

A circumstantial, historical connection "is putting people's eyes on Katla," he says.

"We know of four Eyjafjallajokull eruptions in the past [dating back to AD 500] and in three out of these four cases, there has been a Katla eruption either at the same time or shortly after.

"By shortly, I mean timescales of months to a year. "We consider that the probability of Katla erupting in the near future has increased since Eyjafjallajokull went."

Kathryn Goodenough from the British Geological Survey points out that, as yet, there is no physical explanation for this apparent link.

It seems that when Eyjafjallajokull goes off, Katla tends to follow. "Scientists don't yet know what the connection is," she says. "But we know there are fissures running between the two volcanoes. And they're quite close to each other.

"They're also being subjected to the same tectonic forces. So the chances are that if magma can find a pathway to rise beneath one of them, it can find its way to rise beneath the other."

Researchers do know that the two volcanoes have separate magma chambers, but many suspect that these chambers are physically linked in some way, deep beneath the surface of the Earth.

"But this is only speculative," says Dr Goodenough. "We don't have geophysical evidence that makes that clear."