The Scariest Thing About Sand Mining

Vince Beiser (@vincelb) is an award-winning journalist specializing in social issues, technology, and the places they intersect. His latest book is The World in a Grain: The Story of Sand and How It Transformed Civilization.

• Sand is to cities what flour is to bread -- without sand, civilization as we know it could not exist.
• Sand is at the core of our daily lives, used to make concrete, glass, asphalt, silicon chips in laptops, and smartphones.
• Usable sand is a finite, endangered resource and desert sand doesn't work for construction -- in fact, Dubai imports sand from Australia.
• There's a black market for sand, and there are sand pirates -- it's a resource over which people literally die.
• Nearly 70% of sand on Earth is quartz (one of the most common minerals on earth), and the cycle to create new sand takes 200 million years.
• And much more...

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