Toxic metals

Neil J Bryce’s letter (May 18) about the energy cost of producing lithium for batteries for electric vehicles is sobering, but lithium is only one of the many environmentally disastrous materials needed for the production of electric vehicles.

Rare Earth materials are essential for the production of electric vehicles, from cobalt, also used in batteries, neodymium, samarium, dysprosium and terbium for the magnets in electricmotors, cerium and indium, both used for touch screen control panels, gallium, used in many of the car’ s electronic components, yttrium, used in metal alloys used in electric motors, to lutetium for the led instrument lights, etc.

Many of these need complex extraction processes which use massive amounts of energy and produce masses of extremely toxic wastes. There are hundredsof huge“poison” lakes dot ted around the countries where these materials are produced, one of the most notorious being at Baotou in China, closely followed by one at Tai, also in China. These “tailings lakes” are an environmental catastrophe waiting to happen; in China watercourses are already being poisoned by seepage from such lakes, with disastrous health effects on local populations.

Far from being “green”, electric vehicles and the materials needed for their production are appallingly bad for the environment, though of course some people will insist that carbon dioxide is the great villain, despite the facts that this can be absorbed by simply planting trees which then produce more of the oxygen we need for life! Ian Mcnicholas Ebbw Vale, Wales