INJURY TO CATTLE ABOUT ANACONDA. rig 
It is a matter of general knowledge that a large percentage of the 
sulphur in the ore is given off as sulphur dioxid in the usual smelter 
operations. If the ores given in Table IV are fairly representative 
samples of the material smelted at Anaconda, and if 8,000 tons of 
ore are handled each day, it will at once be seen that a tremendous 
quantity of sulphur dioxid is discharged into the atmosphere. Har- 
kins and Swain ¢ have studied the composition of the smelter smoke 
from the Washoe smelter and found that the average amount of 
sulphur dioxid and trioxid given off per day is 4,686,000 pounds and 
447,600 pounds, respectively. Unfortunately these authors do not 
give the composition and quantity of the ore smelted during the time 
that the experiments were made, so that it is impossible to calculate 
what percentage of the sulphur present in the original ore was dis- 
charged through the stack as sulphur dioxid and trioxid. 
INJURY TO CATTLE BY ARSENIC IN THE VICINITY OF THE 
WASHOE SMELTER. 
A claim made by the farmers, which required investigation, was 
that enough arsenic is given off from the smelter to settle on the sur- 
rounding forage crops and so poison the cattle. To determine this 
it 1s first necessary to show that the ores reduced at the smelter con- 
tain arsenic. Examinations of several samples of ore from mines 
which partly supply the smelter gave the following results: 
TABLE V.—Arsenic content of ore samples. 
| 
E é Name ote mine etarnigh:| | Metallic | : ; | Name of mine furnish-| Metallic 
Serial No. icsore? arcane Serial No. | ing ore. | arsenic. 
Per cent. Per cent. 
ADE Thy ees 3 Speculator.--- =| ZOD PAD Ges eae Bee voc Never S'weat__...____- 0.45 
WAGE RSs ed cad oe | eee ( (Oi ae See | 2s | Avon aan ee es DT AIM OMG eee 1.17 
ADD Oras oe ae PariOtaed = a eae ay Ue tie: OG): baer Ansconda 22223 None. 
TAG" | oe Spee (0 eating ee aa 45 
If we reject the first saniple in Table V as exceptional and consider 
the other ores as representative of those received at the Washoe 
smelter, it will be seen that such ores contain 0.85 per cent of arsenic. 
At this rate, if 8,000 tons of ores per day are smelted, 68 tons of ar- 
senic enter the plant each day and, according to the officers of the 
smelter, only 2 tons of white arsenic are recovered daily. This, 
of course, dees not mean 2 tons of metallic arsenic, but for conveni- 
ence in discussion, it will be considered as such. There remain, there- 
fore, 66 tons of arsenic to account for, which can only escape in a 
volatile form in the fumes, or be carried off in the tailings and slag. 
A determination of arsenic was made in two samples taken from the 
dump in which 0.11 and 0.07 pane cent were found, or an average of 
@ J. Amer. Chem. Sack 1907, 29: 970. 
