Rare Earth Elements - Sediment Toxicity

In recent years, a steady, reliable, and secure supply of critical metals has become increasingly important to major industrialized economies that seek to sustain their industrial base and develop advanced technologies, such as clean energy. In light of this, Canada, with its significant critical metal reserves, has an opportunity to supply some of the global demand for critical metals. However, to transition from promising mineral deposits to marketable products, investment in fundamental R&D and expertise is needed to address the complex technological challenges around the production, separation and processing of critical metals, and to better understand the global market for these key commodities. Rare Earth Elements (REE) represent an opportunity for Canada to enter an emerging and globally strategic market. However, the metallurgy for Canadian ores containing REE involves a complex sequence of individual separation, refinement, alloying and formation stages before they can be used in the production of permanent magnets, consumer electronics and other high value-added high-tech products. Natural Resources Canada has been directed through Budget 2015 to undertake a significant effort to support the development of Rare Earth Elements and chromite in order to maximize Canadian value and benefits from these deposits. The present knowledge of potential eco-toxicological effects of REEs is limited, specifically chronic toxicity data are underrepresented. Therefore, the objective of this project will be to undertake further toxicity tests in sediments to establish effect concentrations for four priority lanthanides: Lanthanum (La), Cerium (Ce), Neodymium (Nd) and Yttrium (Y).