Photo Date: 17 August, 2007
	ISO: 100
	Shutter/Aperture: 1/140, F/5.6
	Camera: Olympus Evolt E-510
	Category: Victoria Mines (Travel)

Although the mine was origionaly extracting copper/nickel, there are blatant signs of other ores strewn about the old smelter site that where simply cast aside. Either too costly to process or the profitable demand had not yet surfaced.
Cobalt for example is now used in batteries, super-alloys, magnetic recording media and nulear (dirty) bombs.
Oh yes, nuclear freakin weapons!
What the Crap!?! ... CRAP!!!
Yeah. Of the 26 different isotopes of Cobalt, only one of them is stable with a mere 3 others being non-radioactive.
Happy day!
I don't seem to remember that on the travel brochure ...
I suspect the actual danger from this is minimal here as Cobalt bits are scattered all over the Sudbury Basin and Environment Canada does regular testing of the immediate water table in this area. Checking up on the Totten Mine effluent you see.
It is just background levels though ... right? Right?!?!
(No really, very little naturally occuring Co is dangerous ... you should still go here!)

This particular former chunk of granite has been blasted free of the bedrock from the high heat of the smelter and is heavily stained by copper, cobalt and iron. In the pentiful rock debris you can also still find traces of nickel/platinum and sulfur. Presumably mixtures of lead and arsenic (common waste products of the smelting process) are also abundant in the giant mounds of industrial Waste.
So don't eat it.