Brazil: 'Time bomb' warning on mining dam disasters
By David Shukman
The catastrophic collapse of a dam at a mine in Brazil has exposed a darker side of an industry that the world depends on
At nearly 800 sites across the country and thousands more around the world, dams contain huge loads of mining waste.
One British scientist, Dr Stephen Edwards of UCL, has warned that "we are sitting on a time bomb".
He told BBC News that further disasters were inevitable.
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While the threat from iron ore mines is the sheer volume and weight of their waste, the danger from gold mines is their toxicity.
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Back in 2015 another dam in [Brazil's Minas Gerais state] collapsed, killing 19 people and poisoning an entire river system, and many local people and observers assumed that much tougher controls on the mining industry would follow.
Instead, experts were stunned to see the state administration become more lenient with a policy called "flexibilisation" - licences for mines and dams could be approved more easily.
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