Baia Mare’s Cyanide Spill: 17 Years of Legacy
Seventeen years ago 100 tonnes of cyanide were spilled into the Someș river, a water stream that flows through the Romanian municipality of Baia Mare (let us refresh your mind with a short, yet precise recap on what happened). The spill is considered the worst environmental disaster in Europe after Chernobyl, affecting not only the region’s ecosystem but also its economy. In a 2010 Deutsche Welle clip, a local member of the community points out:
“If you don’t earn any money you starve to death, but if you have a job and earn something, you die from the poison”.
Today, mining remains a point of heated debate between Romanians and mining companies, with both parties struggling to find a satisfactory agreement. In fact, according to a recent Foreign Policy article, Romanian citizens actively demand a ban on cyanide mining. But the question remains…
Is a ban on cyanide heap leaching the solution?
Enhanced Preventive Measures as an Option.
On a more positive note, Baia Mare’s spill brought together key stakeholders who in 2002 developed a code of best practices in the gold mining industry. The International Cyanide Management Code emphasises the use of proven and reliable methods for sampling and measuring different cyanide species in water. Yet, one of the biggest issues in all industries where cyanide is used OR produced, is its detection and quantification. Usually, other chemical substances, also known as interferences, are present in industrial waste waters and often lead to false readings in cyanide detection methods.
More on this in later posts.
