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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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I referred a friend to an article in this months Atlantic about a "Superfund" (a designation of US government for really nasty pollution sites) and it mention "trailings"
Trailings (not in my M-W10th) are the bits of stuff, (rock) that aren't ore, and that are left at the mine site.
I tend to use slag for this stuff– but M-W10th says slag is a synonym for dross.
So:
Trailing rocks (not ore) left over from mining process. (Not listed at all in my M-W10th )
Slag waste material from refining ore
But in the case of coal– which doesn't need refining (but can be refined to coke) the slag and trailing are the same thing?
Dross left over material from refining ore.--
Are there other words? Do others on the east coast use slag– for trailings?
Is trailing the correct word-- or is slag? or is this a regionalism? What do you call them in Wales, Mav?
What do you Zilds and Ozzies call them?
Most of the mining on the east coast (US) is coal. And while most of it on the east coast is further south than NY, there is coal to be found in many parts of the Appalachians mountains. —right on up to Nova Scotia.
I have gone spelunking in old (colonial) iron mines– and the waste from these has always been called a slag heaps.
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addict
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addict
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"Trailings" was almost certainly a typo (shame on the Atlantic Monthly) - the correct term here is "tailings."
On site at many mines are large tailings piles, which are the rocks, dirt, and such that are cast aside as valueless during the mining process. In some cases these piles are made into great big, flat-topped slabs - they look like mountains with their tops sliced off with a razor, they're so flat. If any of you have ever flown into Tucson, AZ, you've seen them out the window - odd, flat mesas that look far too large to be made by humans, but sadly are.
Because tailings often have traces of whatever metals are being mined, runoff from rain that lands on and trickles through a tailings pile is often heavily contaminated - this is the source of much of of the water contamination at mining sites, and probably why it would be mentioned in an article about Superfund (which we at EPA abbreviate $F).
I'd agree with the distinction you make - tailings are the stuff that gets cast aside immediately, slag is the stuff that is left over after you refine the ore to get the valuable stuff out.
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Carpal Tunnel
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OP
Carpal Tunnel
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mea culpa-- i have mis read it-- (or mis remembered it.) but I don't use "tailings" its not a word in my common vocabulary. I understood it, and but have never used or heard it used locally. It is a "read only" word.
I refer to the lumps of stuff out site a mine pit as "Slag". -- The East Coast of the US doesn't have the same intensive mining as out west, and most of the mines i have visited have been coal mines. and they have slag heaps, not tailing piles.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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The most common form of slag is the waste from the blast furnaces where iron is being refined. Depending on the iron ore and the ingredients added, some of it used to be ground up and used as Portland cement.
Portland cement is manufactured from lime-bearing materials, usually limestone, together with clays, shales, or blast furnace slag containing alumina and silica, in the approximate proportions of 60 percent lime, 19 percent silica, and 8 percent alumina, 5 percent iron, 5 percent magnesia, and 3 percent sulfur trioxide. Some rocks, called cement rocks, are naturally composed of these elements in approximately suitable proportions and can be made into cement without the use of large quantities of other raw materials. In general, however, cement plants rely on mixed materials.
"Cement," Microsoft(R) Encarta(R) 98 Encyclopedia. (c) 1993-1997 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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odd, flat mesas that look far too large to be made by humans, but sadly are.
And you'll see such like like nobody's business once the ~administration has depleted arctic oil and wilderness and returns to the 70s' golden promise of energy independence: shale. Is there a single word for Hell on Earth?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Is there a single word for Hell on Earth?
Yes, insel..............Bush.
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enthusiast
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enthusiast
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Is there a single word for Hell on Earth?
Personally, I think Hell on Earth would be Gorey.
[ducking from bad-pun police e]
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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(ducking from the bad-pun police)And if you cut yourself on a thorn it would be a Gorey Bush . (Aw, now listen to all those minds heading straight for the gutter!...That's not what I was saying...Shame on you!)  (double-ducking the BPP!)
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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I refer to the lumps of stuff outside a mine pit as "Slag". -- says Helen, the face that looked into a thousand pits.
I and, I think, most people this side of the pond would agree. Mostly, we Brits would imagine a coal mine, if you mentioned a "slag-heap", but I have heard the term used about the waste from other sorts of mine as well - it's just that we have (had, pre-Thatcher!) more coal mines than any other sort.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Thanks RC-- and how about Jackie-- Kentucy is Coal mining country here on the east coast*-- and Sparteye-- with all the NYer's in MI-- what do you call the waste stuff out side from a mine (copper, right? Not big ones like the defunct Anaconda but copper?)
*the western US has much more abundant supplies of coal, but kentucy has mostly anthracite-- and very low sulfur anthracite-- at that.
Re:we have (had, pre-Thatcher!) more coal mines than any other sort.
Tin mines, too? Isn't that what brought the Roman's? Tin? to make copper (found on several places in europe) into bronze-- and tin is fairly rare on continent-- and found in Wales and Cornwall?
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Yes, of troy, I would think of the pile of stuff dug out and left from a mine as "slag," but with an awareness that I didn't really know if I were applying the word properly. The copper mines are in the UP. The salt mines are under Detroit. Around here, all we have are gravel pits, sand pits and oil wells.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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In Australia and NZ, piles of tailings - the waste from the mining rather than the smelting process - were also called "mullock" piles. Here in Zild, when the price of gold shot up during the 1980s several small companies began reprocessing the tailings from the 19thC gold mines and did quite nicely, thank you. One Australian company also began working over ground which had been mined alluvially in Otago (Zild) during the gold rush and also did quite well while the price of gold remained over $300, but aren't doing quite so well now that the price has dropped to about $250. A marginal operation!
The idiot also known as Capfka ...
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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<<reprocessed the old tailings and did quite nicely, thank you.>>
I read, or heard, some time ago of a botanist who had developed a gold-loving lettuce or cabbage. The idea was to mine the top soil for gold as a trace mineral. And the idea was not so daft that, during the new economy, at least, it couldn't find good science and capital to back it.
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Pooh-Bah
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Pooh-Bah
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Tin mines, too? Isn't that what brought the Roman's? Tin? to make copper (found on several places in europe) into bronze-- and tin is fairly rare on continent-- and found in Wales and Cornwall?
Certainly tin was important in Roman times, (and before - the Phoenicians used to buy it in Cornwall) and the ore didn't run out until the middle of the C20. Copper was mined in the Lake District, at Coniston, until the end of the C19, and into the v. early C20, I think. But neither have been important over the past hundred years. The only other really important mining opperations have been iron-ore (and that has finished now, so far as I know,) and Salt, which is still a big money-spinner in Cheshire.
"mullock" is a word that you still meet as a dialect word in the East Midlands andd East Anglia, meaning rubbish, or mess. A colleaghue iof mine, if he had a job to do, would always clear up any loose things lying around the work area before he started, saying, "I cain't abear to work wi' arl this mullock about me!"
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old hand
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old hand
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You people have covered coal, iron, copper, tin, gold, and such, but nobody's mentioned the waste products of atomic energy. Are there any specific terms for them? On a less serious note, when former Washington State Governor Dixie Lee Ray was appointed US Atomic Energy Commissioner back in the 1970s, it was rumoured that she retired at night wearing a strontium nightie, but had to discontinue the practice because it gave her a radioactive waist. 
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Carpal Tunnel
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I remember reading that the tailings from concentrating uranium ore contained enough potassium that they could be sold as fertilizer for tobacco. I have wondered about the possibility of traces of radioactive material in such fertilizer could have contributed to the apparent increase in lung cancer from smoking after WWII.
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