Brazil · Country record

The mining record of Brazil

44,354

working-mine processes

dams at alert or emergency

182

press-reported deaths (a floor)

4,196

IBAMA notices on operators

44,354 mineral processes at a working-mine stage (15,448 of them mining concessions) in ANM's cadastre, 910 tailings dams in the SIGBM register with 86 at alert or emergency level, at least 182 mining deaths reported by the Brazilian press, and 4,196 IBAMA environmental notices against named operators.

The Agência Nacional de Mineração (ANM) publishes its cadastre of every active mineral process with the holder's name and its register of every mining dam with the owner's CNPJ, plus a monthly dam-safety bulletin naming each dam whose alert or emergency level changed. IBAMA publishes every federal environmental infraction notice with the infractor's tax id. What no agency publishes is a per-fatality mining record: the deaths here come from the Portuguese-language press, so every count is a floor. No public-information request has been filed yet.

Looking for US mine enforcement instead? See MSHA violations by operator. · Peru's mining record · Chile's mining record · Colombia's record

What Brazil publishes, and what this page reads

ANM cadastre · titleholders and processes

44,354

working-mine processes

ⓘ

A process at a stage where extraction is authorised: concessão de lavra, licenciamento, registro de extração or lavra garimpeira. Exploration permits and applications are counted separately.

15,448

mining concessions

ⓘ

A concessão de lavra is the full mining concession granted by the ministry after research; the other working-mine stages are lighter regimes for aggregates and small-scale mining.

260,672

processes, all stages

60,559

titleholders

ⓘ

The holder's name as ANM's cadastre spells it. The cadastre publishes no tax id, so one company can appear under two spellings and a natural person can hold a process.

Every active mineral process, from exploration applications to mining concessions, synced weekly from ANM's map service (last refreshed Sep 30, 2026), including 3,252 garimpo (small-scale) permits. Holders are named as the cadastre spells them; 220 carry a CNPJ, taken from the dam register, and 10,630 processes list no holder at all.

SIGBM · tailings and mining dams

910

dams

ⓘ

A mining dam registered in SIGBM, ANM's dam-safety system, with the owner's declaration of risk category, potential damage, construction method, height and volume.

at alert or emergency

ⓘ

SIGBM's alert and emergency levels: alert (nível de alerta), then emergency levels 1 to 3, declared by the owner or ANM when a dam's safety condition degrades.

at emergency level

upstream-raised

ⓘ

Alteamento a montante, raising the dam over its own tailings, is the method that failed at Mariana (2015) and Brumadinho (2019) and is banned for new dams.

ANM's dam register, synced weekly (last refreshed Sep 30, 2026): 72 dams rated high risk and 251 rated high potential damage. The Sep 1, 2026 bulletin counted 908 dams, 82 at alert or emergency, and 4 level changes. →

Press · mining deaths, a floor

182

deaths, press floor

ⓘ

Counted from press headlines only; Brazil publishes no official per-fatality mining record, so the true number is undoubtedly higher.

298

press-reported accidents

954

headlines read

Portuguese-language headlines from 2008 to Oct 9, 2026, read daily through Google News (last pull Oct 10, 2026) and classified by a language model against the headline's own words.

IBAMA · environmental infraction notices

4,196

notices

ⓘ

An auto de infração is IBAMA's federal environmental infraction notice: an allegation with a proposed fine, later confirmed, reduced or cancelled in the administrative process.

1,837

operators named

R$ 1,914,616,555

face value

Federal notices from 2010 to 2026 that join to a titleholder in the cadastre by CNPJ or exact name, out of 267,455 rows in IBAMA's open-data file (last pull Oct 8, 2026). Unlinked notices are not shown.

Public-information requests

No request has yet been filed under the Lei de Acesso à Informação (Lei 12.527/2011). The records to ask for are ANM's own accident and fatality records by process, its safety-infraction and fine register with the titleholder CNPJ, and the labour ministry's fatal-accident records by employer. Each answer would replace a press floor with an official record on this page.

Latest press-reported accidents

Oct 9, 2026 electrical company operation

Almirante Tamandaré, PR

1 killed

“Acidente fatal em mineradora resulta na morte de trabalhador eletrocutado em Almirante Tamandaré”

Folha de Curitiba →