The structure of mining industries in Turkmenistan is rather peculiar. There is no large-scale metal mining, and production mostly includes construction materials and hydrocarbons (oil and gas).
The mining industry is responsible for the accumulation of great quantities of wastes, including harmful ones:

• solid wastes formed in the process of mining of mineral resources from the earth and their primary treatment (dumps of overburden, dressing tails, etc.);
• "supplementary" wastes: remnants of production structures, aggregates and materials used by mining enterprises;
• liquid wastes: quarry and mine waters, flotation reagents, edge waters in the oil and gas fields, etc.

The greatest amount of technogenic wastes in Turkmenistan is found near the sulphur plant in Gaurdak. It is equal approximately to 350 million tons (dumps of overburden, poor ores, and dressing tails) with 8 to 10 million tons being added every year.
Buzmeyin, a satellite town of Ashgabat, has the country's largest production association of construction materials and a cement plant, which cause greatest alarm among the public and nature conservation organisations. Under the Decree of the President of Turkmenistan Saparmurat Turkmenbashi, for the purpose of improving the ecological situation in the city of Buzmeyin, at present all large industrial enterprises are being moved away.
Extremely harmful substances in the mining wastes. Today this problem is of a rather localised nature. The accumulation of such harmful metal as thallium in the sorbents used for the extraction of iodine and bromine from the groundwater. In the dumps of the Cheleken chemical plant the average content of thallium is 162 g/t, with the background level being 1.7 g/t. Similar figures can be expected for the dumps of the Balkanabat iodine-bromine plant.