Arsenic mining is forever... Hound atop arsenic spoilheap, still splendidly bald despite about a century of abandonment. The heap, not the lurcher. The lurcher is not particularly abandoned.
We go there from time to time, but we don't usually spend much time on the sands, they are surrounded by thick woodland, and sometimes we go down afterwards for a paddle in the river.
The river supplies drinking water to Plymouth and gets all the run-off, so I can only assume that it's considered sufficiently diluted by the time it gets down there!
There's a very frightening stream on the other side of the valley - well, two frightening streams. One of them has very VERY clean rocks at the bottom. Honestly it's like it's a stream of bleach. And the other one is bright scary orange. Neither of them have anything growing in them.
I don't let the dogs go near those, but they never have any poison sand on them by the time we get home (about a mile away), I've tried wiping them over and nothing comes off. It's convenient having Teflon dogs.
Yeah, soil isn't a miracle lock-up for everything...
Good, good :) (And I hope you didn't think I was implying you might be careless regarding this stuff because that wasn't my intention, it's just having worked in this area it's bit of a pet topic of mine - apparently one of the county councils down there somewhere used to use mining spoil to keep the weeds down in their car parks!)
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2014-07-11 08:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-12 09:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-12 09:56 am (UTC)But I'm seriously impressed by how nothing - nothing at all! - grows on arsenic spoil. Wow.
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Date: 2014-07-12 09:47 pm (UTC)But it is odd. I mean, this is an environment so damp that lichen and moss grow on my car!
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Date: 2014-07-12 07:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-07-12 09:53 pm (UTC)The river supplies drinking water to Plymouth and gets all the run-off, so I can only assume that it's considered sufficiently diluted by the time it gets down there!
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Date: 2014-07-13 11:25 am (UTC)But yeah, if the doggies tend to lick their paws after walks, you probably don't want them eating the dust...
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Date: 2014-07-13 08:27 pm (UTC)I don't let the dogs go near those, but they never have any poison sand on them by the time we get home (about a mile away), I've tried wiping them over and nothing comes off. It's convenient having Teflon dogs.
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Date: 2014-07-14 04:57 pm (UTC)Good, good :) (And I hope you didn't think I was implying you might be careless regarding this stuff because that wasn't my intention, it's just having worked in this area it's bit of a pet topic of mine - apparently one of the county councils down there somewhere used to use mining spoil to keep the weeds down in their car parks!)