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A few asked me about my smokestack photo that won a prize at the
Visual Art Best of season show in Ocala. The photo is from North Adams,
Mass 25 miles from where we stayed in Williamstown Ma. City sits on an
unusual rock formations from the ice age loaded with various
minerals. Old factory abandoned Mill towns from the textile industry in
the 1800s and 1900s that eventually moved South and then overseas. They
have been trying for some time to make these abandoned buildings into
Art centers The only thing going strong is the polluting chemical
minerals factory nearby.
About Specialty Minerals Inc.
Specialty Minerals Inc. (SMI), a wholly owned subsidiary of
Minerals Technologies Inc., is an international producer of high-performance
minerals: talc, precipitated calcium carbonate, ground calcium carbonate, lime,
dolomite and barytes. The wide variety of applications for our products
includes paper, plastics, adhesives, sealants, paint, ink, pharmaceuticals,
food fortification, nutritional supplements, specialty ceramics, inks, building
products, agriculture, and many others.
We've been active in the mining and manufacture of minerals for
more than 150 years—our Adams, Massachusetts, U.S., operation began mining
limestone in 1853. SMI is the world’s largest manufacturer of precipitated
calcium carbonates (PCCs), with an output of over 4 million tons of PCC a
year. The world's first commercial PCC manufacturing began in the United
Kingdom in 1898, at a plant that SMI acquired in 1998. SMI PCC manufacturing in
the U.S. began in 1936 and nano PCCs have been produced for more than 25
years. SMI's over 50 PCC plants are located in 17 countries.
Minerals Technologies Inc. Environmental, Health and Safety
Policy
Paper Industry Driver: Environmental Factors
On a daily basis, paper companies are faced with enormous
pressures to reduce their environmental discharge. Sources of
"pollution" can come from air emissions, wastewater, landfill, and
even thermal pollution. In the aggregate, the cost of reducing or eliminating
these sources of pollution runs into the billions of dollars and the standards
to meet discharge specifications continue to become more stringent.
Specialty Minerals Inc. (SMI) is fully aware of the difficulty
faced by paper mills in meeting environmental compliance. For many years, we
have worked with paper companies to design products and programs that are
environmentally friendly. For instance, we offer an alternative,
phosphate-free, acid-tolerant chemistry suitable for neutral or weakly acidic
groundwood papermaking. In conjunction with the AT® precipitated
calcium carbonate (PCC) system, our phosphate-free, acid-tolerant process
eliminates one more source of this chemical species.
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