The Gold Mining Industry's Deadly Secrets is a post from your green blog in an ongoing attempt to help the world go green
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It's well-known that where greed begins, ethics and moral values end.
The gold mining industryis no stranger to this concept. In their blind pursuit of gold, moguls will do anything it takes to stay at the top of the food chain…even if it means harming, or even killing those at the bottom.
Welcome to the dangerous world of gold mining.
When envisioning the hunt for gold, people naively picture men during the California Gold Rush panning for gold or working with pickaxes to free chunks of gold from caves. This is a pipe dream and far from today's harsh reality. The truth is that, after thousands of years of humans relentlessly pursuing gold, major gold resources have been depleted.
Gold that is mined today is minute in proportion to the ore surrounding it. The average proportion of gold to surrounding ore is 10 grams of gold per one ton of ore surrounding it! That is literally like looking for a needle in a haystack. So, how do miners extract the microscopic amounts of gold from the ore surrounding it?
Enter the science of explosives and chemical solvents. Large open-pit mines are created through blasting and excavating large amounts of ore. The ore is then pulverized and mixed with water to create a muddy mixture called slurry. The slurry is then treated with a liquid solvent to dissolve the gold from the ore. It sounds innocent enough, however the liquid solvent used is none other than the highly toxic cyanide, the gas used in the Holocaust to murder thousands of victims in gas chambers. In high concentrations, this toxic cocktail could be fatal to humans and mammals.
Yes, this is the chemical that now has to be safely disposed of. Bear in mind that gold excavation is not performed in barren, uninhabited areas. Gold companies simply follow the gold, and if that gold happens to be found near people, well then, so be it. Nothing will stop them! So the burning question is, where does that cyanide go?
Mining companies try to come up with countless ways to dispose of the highly toxic cyanide. One company which is lauded for its efforts to carefully and safely dispose of the cyanide does so by keeping the contaminated water in a reservoir with trenches to prevent leakage. In the case of a natural disaster, however, an entire reservoir of highly toxic water could be unleashed. There have also been cases where the cyanide leached into the soil and groundwater, contaminating and harming the entire ecosystem. In a town in Romania, pipes carrying cyanide burst, creating irreversible damage tothe town and its inhabitants.
Recently, a simple yet brilliant way of eliminating all this harm to ecosystems has been introduced. Everyday Americans can recycle, donate their gold to charity, or even get cash for gold, while helping to keep our planet safe. When selling old gold to be melted down and reused, there are only winners. The gold is being recycled, thus cuttingback on the need for dangerously mined gold, and due to record high gold prices, the seller gets extra cash for gold jewelry that was collecting dust. One can only hope that this new trend will continue to gain in popularity, thus
reducing the need for hazardous gold mining.
Fay Rich is a jeweler and gold expert who urges consumers to get cash for gold now, while the going is good. He recommends Captain Cash for Gold, a metal refiner that is dedicated to a eco friendly policy of integrity and reliability.
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