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To: The Street who wrote (21089)	10/8/1998 1:22:00 AM
From: NickSE	Respond to of 116806

Plants can remove gold from ore, might be useful for mining industry 1.13 a.m. ET (0513 GMT) October 8, 1998 — Who needs miners to mine gold? Scientists have found a way to make plants soak up gold from ore, suggesting a new way of mining the precious metal. This approach, called phytomining, has been demonstrated before for recovering nickel. Scientists have also studied plants for removing pollutants like lead from soil; just last month, researchers said hybrid poplar trees might be useful for soaking up mercury. Some plants naturally soak up very tiny amounts of gold. The new work was aimed at getting higher, commercially useful yields. Indian mustard plants that grew in pots of ore for a week were harvested and dried, and analysis showed they contained gold at up to about 20 parts per million by weight. The yield was higher when they grew in sand mixed with gold. Other plants, including chicory, also soaked up gold. The key was using a chemical called ammonium thiocyanate to make the metal soluble in the soil, said Christopher W.N. Anderson, Robert R. Brooks and colleagues at Massey University in Palmerston North, New Zealand. They reported their findings in today's issue of the journal Nature. The approach suggests that fields of crops could be used to extract gold from ore or mine waste. However, David E. Salt of Northern Arizona University, who has studied the use of plants to remove lead from soil, said his informal calculations suggest the approach would not make economic sense unless the plants soaked up much more gold. "I think it's premature to talk about making money out of it,'' Salt said. John Turney, manager for metallurgy at the Homestake Mining Co. in San Francisco, agreed that the idea doesn't appear economically viable now. He also said companies are prohibited from spreading ammonium thiocyanate on the ground because of the potential environmental harm. foxmarketwire.com