'Christmas Minerals ' Trail Leads To Bureau Geologist

by Valerie Kimble

SOCORRO, N.M., Dec. 3, 1998 -- Virginia McLemore isn't one to seek the national spotlight, but listeners of CBS radio news may get a chance to hear her voice in the weeks before Christmas.

McLemore, an economic geologist with the New Mexico Bureau of Mines and Mineral Resources (NMBMMR), was interviewed for a short holiday feature with a somewhat unusual theme: The natural resources used in producing what is for many the reigning symbol of the Yuletide season -- the Christmas tree.

McLemore was contacted a few weeks ago by a representative of the American Communications Foundation to set up a short interview to be used on CBS radio news as part of its "Islet Files."

"The producer called me and said he had gotten a hold of an article I had written for Lite Geology," said McLemore. "He started asking me a lot of questions, and we talked for a few minutes about the various components of the tree. Then, he asked me if I was willing to go on the air." McLemore consented, and the producer tentatively scheduled an interview for early December. "I still don't know where he got a hold of the Lite Geology article," she said.

Lite Geology is what its name implies: A publication of short, snappy articles on contemporary geologic topics. It's published quarterly by the NMBMMR and is aimed at educators and the general public. The article on "Natural Resources and Your Christmas Tree," written by McLemore and geoscience student Doug Jones, appeared in the Winter 1992 issue.

Their article links the decorated Christmas tree to the mining industry and the natural resources it produces. Since the evergreen tree is to Christmas what Wal-Mart is to shopping, it's appropos that the interview took place at a Wal-Mart store in Albuquerque. The idea, said McLemore, was to intersperse the technical side of the story with comments from Wal-Mart holiday shoppers.

"It's supposed to air a week or two before Christmas," she said. "They'll be giving us a tape."

So what was it about the Lite Geology article that caught the eye of a producer living in California?

Well, for one thing, there's the tree itself, and no matter where it might have originated, it could still have a New Mexico connection through potash, which is mined on the southeast side of the state, near Carlsbad.

"About half of the world's production of sulfur and over 90 percent of the production of phosphates and potash go into fertilizers," said McLemore.

Surface and ground water resources also are needed to grow the trees, and then there are the metals used for cutting them, she said. Molybdenum, mined near Taos and some by-products from the Santa Rita open pit copper mine at Chino, near Silver City, is used in making steel.

Silver is a component of electrical wire, alloys and foil, as is copper. Add to the list gold, magnesium, manganese, zinc, iron ore, aluminum and chromium, for everything from nails and screws to electric circuit boards and metal tubing.

What would a Christmas tree be without lights? And where would lights be without those thin filaments of tungsten metal, a relatively inexpensive material produced from the minerals sheelite and wolframite.

"Now look at the ornaments, the electricity used for the lights, and the associated coal, uranium, oil, and gas used for electrical power -- all of that is mined or produced in New Mexico," McLemore said.

An additional Land of Enchantment connection is the "plastic" insulation in electric wires, formed from the state's petrochemicals with industrial mineral additives.

While we're on the subject of industrial recipes, think about those shiny holiday ornaments and their brightly metallic colors. "Feldspar and silica go into the glass, and there are other additives for color," she said.

"Quite a bit of mica is mined in New Mexico," said McLemore, referring to a thin, plate-like material used in paints. "It takes color well," she said.

And what colors! The mineral titanium oxide produces white, while yellows, browns, and some reds are a result of iron ore. Copper gives turquoise-green hues, cobalt produces blues, and for purple, there's lithium, which also is used to lower the "fluxing" temperature in glass production.

"Magnesium oxide gives a black, although it's difficult to get true blacks and whites for 'color,'" McLemore added.

The minerals that go into just the ornaments themselves make for a list almost as long as Santa's:
Gypsum (plaster), limestone (paint), clays (ceramics, rubber, pottery, paper), barite (paint, primer coats, rubber, glass, ceramics), boron (glass), fluorspar or fluorite (glass), garnet (ceramics, glass), feldspar (glass), talc (ceramics and paper), tin, and the very versatile titanium (paint, varnishes, lacquers, plastics, paper, rubber, metal alloy). Oh, and don't forget the vermiculite (plaster, insulation).

McLemore said Christmas tree prices in general reflect the commercial cost of growing the trees, cutting them, and then transporting them to select markets.

It's also no coincidence that many of the minerals mentioned by McLemore are mined near factories that use them. "A lot of feldspar and quartz are mined back east, which is where a lot of the glass factories are," she said. "You would seldom find an area mined just for pigment. Pigment would just be one of the uses for a particular mineral."

So there it is: The finished tree, resplendent in shining lights and shimmery ornaments, grown with fertilizer, tamed by metal saws, and transported in trucks that burn fuel oil.

"It's a very complex system that depends on everyone in it," said McLemore. It's a system that includes Father Christmas, and one that wouldn't exist without Mother Nature.