Stanley Koh
KUALA LUMPUR - During the Second World War, hydrogen cyanide was used in the Nazi gas chambers in the concentration camps of Auswitz and Maidanek that killed millions of people. When Germany was defeated, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler, his henchmen including Himmler and Goering and mistress Eva Braun committed suicide by taking sodium cyanide.
Cyanide is so toxic and lethal to humans and the environment that many countries have either curbed its use in industrial mining or completely banned it.
Environmentalists and human rights groups across the globe lobbied against the industrial use of cyanide particularly in the mining of gold.
The contamination involving the Bong Mieu River in central Quan Nam, a province in Vietnam which was polluted by gold mining activities, is a recent infamous incident.
According to news reports in Vietnam, the Bong Mieu Gold Mining Company infringed environmental laws while using 9.5 tonnes of cyanide a month in its gold mining activities.
The company did not complete its waste treatment system and had not submitted documents for inspection of its facilities as required before a gold mining company could begin operations.
When local residents reported fishes and livestock died mysteriously and children fell ill allegedly because the air was poisoned, the local authority ignored the complaints.
“No one dared to bathe in the river because of fear of getting skin diseases and livestock that fell sick after drinking the water. The company’s plant often released thick fumes into the atmosphere around midnight,” said Ung Thi Tai, a resident.
When the disaster finally was acknowledged, officials found that the company had not only failed to build an air monitoring and treatment system for the dust particles produced by its activities but it had also secretly released untreated waste water into the river during rainy days.
Cyanide disasters
Another case that occurred in 2000 involved a Romanian gold mining company with Australian equity interest. Baia Mare Aurul Gold Mine released 100,000 cubic metres of waste water heavily contaminated with cyanide into the Lapus and some tributaries of the River Tisza, one of the biggest in Hungary.
The cyanide contaminated water was carried to the Danube river which flows through Serbia, Bulgaria and Romania. It caused extensive damage to the river’s ecosystem and its fauna.
The European Environment Agency described the Romanian case as the worst to affect the region’s river system.
In 1988, a toxic spill in southern Spain from the Boliden Apirsa zinc mine in Aznalcollar cost tax payers EUR 377.70 million (RM1.87 billion).
According to a Greenpeace International report, there are regular incidents involving cyanide in mining. The report explained “tailing dams”, where the contaminated waste water from the mining process is stored are a frequent cause of serious environmental disasters.
New technology
Cyanide “heap leaching’ refers to the use of highly toxic solutions to recover gold from large piles of low-grade ore or “tailings” left behind in gold mining as used in the United States in the late 1980s and early 1990s by making it profitable to recover even small amounts of the precious metal.
Since the 1960s when “cyanide heap leaching” was introduced in the mining process, the toxic impact of gold mining increased. The process involves pouring a cyanide solution over crushed ore. The cyanide solution percolates, dissolves the gold and carries it to solution ponds. This technique requires use of large quantities of highly toxic cyanide.
The cyanide solution is either re-used or stored in a dam or directly discharged into rivers or the sea. Toxic heavy metals and metalloids, such as arsenic, occur frequently in ores and can be released with crushing and leaching.
The killing ponds and dams
Heap leach gold mines, however, collect cyanide-laden waste water in huge ponds or “tailing basins”, some of which cover as much as 25 hectares. In the Romanian case, human negligence was discovered in the construction of the dam and the tailing basin.
The dam burst because a high amount of sand instead of rocky materials were used, making it unstable.
“Mining companies violate even minimal environmental standards all over the world and destroy large areas of nature,” the Greenpeace report charged.
“Habitats are destroyed and groundwater supplies and river systems are polluted, particularly in developing countries, where mining companies often ignore environmental standards,” the report added.
The blame game
A group calling itself Cyanide-Free-Romania concluded after the tragedy that, “It is standard practice that each time when an accident occurs at a mine site, the mining company claims that it is not responsible as its operation was authorised by the relevant national authorities.”
In the Vietnamese case, the Bong Mieu Gold Mining Company blamed the death of aquatic life on heavy rain and abnormal weather.
Greenpeace believes international rules should be established for the use of cyanide in mining including full liability by mining companies for all the potential damage both to people and the environment.
There should be a ban on mining in areas of special environmental interest or close to populated areas while stringent standards should be set for mining operations that cover transport, storage and treatment of waste and products, it said.
Following the Romanian disaster, the country’s government banned the use of cyanide in mining. Cyanide use in mining is also banned in some parts in the United States and provinces of Argentina.
Indeed, defending the use of cyanide in gold mining can never justify the high risk of human negligence and indifference of a government towards the right to a safe living environment.
Gold can never be valued higher than human lives.
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