As recently as 2010, few industries were as lawless, and yet as central to the global economy, as China's production of rare earth metals. Consignments of rare earths frequently changed hands for sacks of Chinese currency: The rule of thumb was that a cubic foot of tightly packed 100-renminbi bills was worth $350,000.
The environmental costs of unregulated mining and refining were high for many years. In southern China, forested hillsides and emerald rice fields were turned into expanses of toxic mud, as Chinese crime syndicates hired laborers to dig up ore and process it in unlined acid pits.
Gone is the Wild West, go-go mentality where the environment was given short shrift now it is much more controlled, said David Abraham, a rare earth industry consultant.
Thousands of square miles of pasture were closed to grazing because of contamination by radioactive dust from refineries, which was blamed for the deaths of thousands of goats.
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