Mining dam disasters: lessons from the past for reducing current and future risks

On January 25th 2019, the municipality of Brumadinho, located in the metropolitan region of Belo Horizonte, was devastated by the collapse of Dam 1 of the Vale company’s Córrego do Feijão iron mine. The dam burst caused one of the world’s worst mining dam disasters since 1960. Some 13 million m³ of mud containing mining tailings were spilled, causing huge environmental impacts, in particular on the River Paraopeba, as well as human losses comprising at least 300 deaths.

In order to understand this disaster and its significance for Public Health, three consequences need to be considered which may or may not be linked to each other: (i) disruption of normal local or regional everyday life, involving material, cultural, economic and environmental losses and harm, as well as increased risks, disease and deaths; (ii) overloading of local or state-level institutional capacity over and above their working capacity when using the own resources; (iii) alteration to contexts in which risks and diseases are produced arising after the event, with regard to both preexisting and new characteristics, resulting in overlapping conditions of environmental and human risk and harm among affected territories and populations which may last for months or even years. For the community of researchers and  professionals who work with the issue of disasters, it is consensus that lessons should be drawn from them, so as to avoid the repetition of failures and mistakes, risks and diseases, losses and damage.