Gold mining can be a dirty business, both environmentally and ethically. Extracting gold from the mined ore creates a huge amount of waste — roughly 20 tonnes of mining waste to make a single 18-carat ring containing less than 10 grams of gold, according to an estimate from Earthworks, an environmental watchdog based in Washington, DC. What's more, many small-scale operations in the developing world make use of child labour, and can support civil wars or local warlords.
The US Environmental Protection Agency rates the metal mining industry as the number one toxic polluter in the country in its Toxics Release Inventory 2011. A large part of this pollution is cyanide, the main chemical used to leach gold from crushed ore; it can contaminate surface and ground water if it leaks from waste sites. One of the worst such accidents occurred in Romania in 2000, when a burst dam sent cyanide-contaminated water into the Someş river, and eventually into the Danube. It killed large numbers of fish and poisoned the drinking water of more than 2.5 million people.
Mining companies often say that new technologies will make mining cleaner, says Alan Septoff, communications director at Earthworks, but that is rarely the case. Research commissioned by Earthworks found that, in the United States, “75% of mines wind up polluting water, no matter what they promise,” he says.
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