It’s Deeper Than You Think As Study Shows Potential for Hemp in Cleaning Toxic Old Mines

Cannabis pulls toxins from the Soil

Cannabis can be used to clean up acid waste and heavy metals from abandoned mine dumps.

Wits University master’s student Tiago Campbell  , has demonstrated how planting hemp on old mine dumps pulls the toxicity out of the soil.

He says a programme of hemp mine rehabilitation could open up new areas for human settlement in Gauteng and the Free State where abandoned mines pose a threat to the environment.

Campbell says the hemp could then be processed into building material as it would be unfit for human or animal consumption.

The polluted areas are within the Witwatersrand Basin, one of the world’s largest gold deposits that stretches for 400 kilometers through the Gauteng, Free State, and North West provinces.

South Africa’s Federation for a Sustainable Environment said there are at least 380 abandoned mining areas in Gauteng Province containing “elevated levels of toxic and radioactive metals” including arsenic, cadmium, cobalt, copper, zinc and uranium.

Campbell’s initial findings were published in Hemp Today on 11 November 2021.

His research so far has confirmed hemp as a “heavy metal hyper-accumulator” in comparison to other plants studied for their phyto-remediation potential – Indian mustard, water hyacinth, alfalfa and sunflower. The “hyper-accumulator” characteristics of hemp were proven in cleanup efforts in the 1990s when Ukraine’s Institute of Bast Crops documented the plant’s ability to absorb heavy metals such as lead, nickel, cadmium, zinc and chromium in the Chernobyl nuclear fall-out zone.

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