ABSOLUTE NO TO USE OF CYANIDE IN GOLD MINING
by Dr Wong Ang Peng (26 March 2008)
I learned early in my naturopathic medicine training that cyanide is the most and deadliest poison on earth. Imagine the spy thriller movies when one bite of the capsule produces mouth foaming and death within seconds. Imagine the gas chamber for death row prisoners. Imagine the Auschwitz Holocaust, where Zyklon B pellets were used for mass murder via toxic gas. The common denominator is cyanide.
Cyanide compound, when dissolves in water, produces toxic gas. Cyanide binds readily to haemoglobin, preventing oxygen from reaching cells, hence it kills by asphyxiation, or inhibiting tissue oxidation.
On 14 June 2003, when I was among 400 odds scientists, doctors, and health activists gathered at the International Criminal Court, The Hague, to launched an official complaint against George W. Bush, Antony Blair, Richard Cheney and others, for their illegal war against Iraq, I had a chance encounter with Mr August Kowalczyk, a Polish Auschwitz concentration camp survivor. Mr Kowalczyk’s words are still fresh in my mind – “Truckful loads of my countrymen, including women and children were brought to the camp. They were striped naked, herded into the shower and underground chamber, where they would be murdered by cyanide gas. One hour later bodies huddled together were carted out. Their gold teeth would be pulled out. Hairs of women trimmed for making mattresses. Abdominal fats cut out for making soaps”.
Malaysiakini’s report on 21 Mar 08, “Poisonous goldmine row : Residents file suit”, that the residents of Bukit Koman are seeking legal recourse over gold mining operation within their vicinity which involves the use of cyanide.
The Malaysian Society of Natural Health fully support the Bukit Koman villagers with an absolute “NO to Cyanide” in gold mining.
As cyanide readily bonds with gold, they are usually use to extract gold through leaching process. Cyanide solutions are sprayed over dug out soil to bond with the minute grains of gold ore, and thereafter separating the cyanide solution and gold.
One can imagine the threat posed to the environment and health by such gigantic scale operation as in Bukit Koman, Raub – toxic gas, ground and aquifer contamination, wastewater runoff flowing into river and sea, deaths to animals and birds, toxic accumulation of cyanide in fishes, marine lives, plants that will come back to haunt us. Toxic accumulation in humans that can kill if the dose is fatal, or kill slowly in a few years depending on level exposed. Children born to parents exposed can have defects.
Surely the villagers of Bukit Koman do not need such gold mining activities in their vicinity. As the operation grows in scale, more and more people will get sick due to cyanide exposure. Early signs and symptoms to low concentrations are dizziness, lethargy, nausea, palpitation, eye irritation, and difficult breathing. Prolonged exposure can cause nervous disorder, cardiac arrest, seizure, severe asthma, and premature death.
Furthermore, it is not the local people of Bukit Koman who will get rich out of the gold mining operation. The few people from the capital and their foreign cohorts will be enriched. The investors will rape the ground off the gold, leaving behind strings of acute and chronic diseases among the locals, and of course some pittance in return for what they gleefully call, ‘employment’. Perhaps the only fitting place for such cyanide gold mining is the Great Australian Desert. Or perhaps the locals in Putrajaya do not mind such mining operation if gold is discovered in one of the lakes there?
The officials responsible who approved the mining project in Bukit Koman and the EIA report must be morons of morons. Period.
I would like to pay tribute to a great friend, the Hon Edward Hagedorn, Mayor of Puerto Princesa, Palawan, Philippines. He does not allow any mining activities, logging, cyanide fishing, nor any form of gambling within his city jurisdiction. Yet the more than 400,000 population in the city live in harmony, businesses are thriving, low crime rate, very clean environment, pristine sea despite the city is also a port, tree plantings become an annual festival, no beggars, booming tourism industry, peaceful and harmonious coexistence of the Christians and Muslims. Above all, Puerto Princesa won several UN environmental awards, and boasts having two World Heritage sites. Yours truly is honoured to have been invited to launch the ‘Zero Heart Attack Project by 2012’ in Puerto Princesa. When asked in 2007 why he disallowed mining activities in his city, he answered, “I have traveled to many parts of the world. In all cities where mining operations occur, the local people are not the ones who get rich. The investors exploit the land, but leave behind diseases like TB and cancer”.
Are there any Malaysians, from among the governments, equal to the Hon Edward Hagedorn?
Dr Wong Ang Peng
President, Society of Natural Health, Malaysia
Director, Dr Rath Health Foundation for South East Asia -- SNH articles
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