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Gold/Mining/Energy : Gold Price Monitor -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Fishfinder who wrote (85789)	5/24/2002 4:54:15 PM
From: long-gone	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 117016

In truth, between some & much of that which the mining companies get blamed is naturally occurring, but the truth doesn't fit the agenda of EPA & the environmental extremists. Were we to allow them their way, the remaining 8 humans on earth would live in cave, naked, eating grass.

To: Fishfinder who wrote (85789)	5/24/2002 5:51:06 PM
From: E. Charters	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 117016

While cyanide is highly toxic, it is not used by the gold mining industry near as much as the metal plating industry and other industry. It is indispensible for many plating and hardening industrial processes. Cyanide used in the gold mining industry is very dilute. It may be as low as 0.50 lounds per ton of liquid. (Still highly poisonous as the LD50 for rats is 6.4 PPM) There are good processes for recovering it from liquors and also for killing it. There is the permanganate process, the iron sulphate and the chlorine process. Each take about 24 hours to complete a reduction of the cyanide to safe levels in ponds. Once the cyanide is in an outdoor pond and reduced to relatively safe levels, its toxicity is further reduced by destruction from the ultraviolet light of the sun. It is quickly reduced from that and contact with many other iron compounds in the water. In fact cyanide far from being persistent in natural surroundings is hard to keep alive. What are called cyanicides which rapidly destroy cyanide abound in mill and mine liquors and frequently bedevil recovery processes. Cyanide's short lived nature in the environment has led the Canadian ministry of the environment to practically ignore it as an issue. There has been no serious environmental poisoning incident in Canadian mining history. The spectacular and highly publicized incidents of cyanide poisoning of rivers in the past few years in other areas are less a factor of cyanide's dangers than of poor tailings dam design and improper evaluation of flood risk to dam structures. In fact given the large quantities of tailings that escaped in the Omai incident, the remarkable fact is that there was no proven case of human illness from the cyanide spill. 10 miles downriver the cyanide was undetectable in the water. This was probably due to massive dilution as well as plentiful cyanicides and low levels in the pond to begin with. By the time the waters get to a tailings pond the levels should be low. Processes of cyanide destruction have already taken place. The retention in the pond is long enough that overflow should not be poisonous. No responsible company would dream of allowing posionous overflow. And talings waters have to overflow. I won't say that cyanide is a false bogeyman. It should be respected. Cyanide recovery and destruction systems should be regulated, monitored and improved. But it is far from the only highly dangerous chemical used in industry today. The nickel industry has some hummdingers in phosgene gas and nickel carbonyl. The rubber tire, oil, creosote, pharmaceutical, and plastic cookware industries have some winners too. But I don't see any rush to shut them down. EC<:-}