"You have to take out rock ore and then you turn that into a powder and then you flood that with cyanide and the cyanide brings out the heavy metal.
"So it brings out the gold and silver but it also brings out lots of real nasties, like cadmium, arsenic, mercury. Really dangerous stuff.
"You end up with a large amount of toxic waste. For one gold ring, you end up with the equivalent, conservatively, of 18 tonnes of toxic waste."
Toxic waste has to be contained and kept out of the food chain and waterways for thousands of years, he says. But even with the safest containment, there is no guarantee the earth won't move and the waste spill out anyway.
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