Hexavalent chromium

 
 
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– What is hexavalent chromium?
– Have you met people in the town with patulous holes instead of noses and ears?
– I have. Ghastly sight, too. It must be some kind of leprosy?
– No, not leprosy. It’s the impact of exposure to hexavalent chromium. These people used to mine and process chromium ore. Hexavalent chromium destroys all cartilaginous tissues in the body. The ugly old people you saw aren't even 50 yet. They are living out their last years. The first occupational hazard category, the waste is to be stored forever. The Japanese offer 10 thousand dollars for the storage of a vitrified block with Cr (VI).
    The story was told on the way from Aktobe to the mining and processing plant (GOK) by an elderly researcher briefing his young colleague.
    It was forty years ago. Chromium is still widely used industrially and the demand for it is growing, but it is less dangerous Cr 3+ that is used. However, it must first be separated from Cr6+, and the latter is to be buried forever. A very expensive and dangerous procedure. And the burial site is not to be disturbed in any way.
All that is left to do is hope.
The materials and technologies seem to have improved, but the waste is still destined to be stored forever. The burial ground is modern enough in a restricted-access zone with several confinement lines. It is excluded forever from human use.
      And who wheels the carts with containers in the repository? Earlier, between the forties and the eighties, the waste was transported by dump trucks on layers of clay. The workers were mostly cons. And now there’s no particular pattern. There are good salaries and allowances, early retirement; reliable overalls and respirators, professional control.  God bless everyone working there, and us too.

    P.S. to the last sentence. Ten years later, there was an accident at SevGOK, in Krivoy Rog (Ukraine). The overburden excavator weighing about 2,000 tons slid about 50 meters downwards. By sheer luck it did not turn over and there were no casualties. The work at the GOK was stopped. The excavator, like an avalanche, demolished two pit benches. From the Commission of Inquiry report emerged the following background to the story. In the 50s, GOK workers were given land plots for country houses and gardens (dachas) in a hollow belonging to a collective farm. The dacha owners built a dam and made a pond in the lower part of the terrain. In the course of 40 years the open pit edge came close to the pond. The pond water soaked into the loam layers turning it into quicksand under the excavator load. And on that quicksand the latter smoothly slid down. 
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