Gold mining operation

Eisler, R., D.R. Clark, Jr., S.N. Wiemeyer, and C.J. Henny. 1999. Sodium cyanide hazards to fish and other wildlife from gold mining operations. Pages 55-67 in J.M. Azcue (ed.). Environmental Impacts of Mining Activities Emphasis on Mitigation and Remedial Measures. Springer-Verlag, Berlin. 

Air concentrations up to 3.9 pg As/m3 near gold mining operations were associated with adverse effects on vegetation. Higher concentrations of 19 to 69 pg As/m3, near a coal-fired power plant in Czechoslovakia, produced measurable contamination in soils and vegetation in a 6-km radius (NRCC 1978). 

Natural organisms can provide information pertaining to the chemical state within an environment, not through their presence or absence, but through their ability to concentrate heavy metals within tissues. For example, sentinel organisms, which include bivalves, have been used to monitor the concentrations of bioavailable metals and toxicity in aquatic ecosystems (Lau et al., 1998 Hall et al., 2002 Byrne and O Halloran, 2001). Bivalves have been used to monitor heavy-metal pollutants from gold-mine operations in Sarawak Malaysia (Lau et al., 1998). 

Treatment of Cyanide-Containing Waste Water from Gold Mine Operation by Liquid Membrane Technology. News release in Kexue Bao (Newspaper of Science), China, October 16, 1987. 

Mercury is. of course, a naturally occurring element. However. industrial pollution is a major source of environmental mercury. The pollution comes from many sources, such as coal-burning power plants, rclinertes. runc from factories, and industrial waste. Mercury also enters the environment from such sources as automobile exhausts, sewage treatment plants, medical and dental facilities, and water runoff from mercury and gold-mining operations. The Clean Air Act, first enacted in 1970 in the United Stales, mandated levels of air pollution, including mercury. Likewise, the EPA has set water-quality criteria for levels of mercury in both fresh and saltwater systems, The Clean Water Act requires that individual slates achieve safe concentration levels for pollutants like mercury. 

Mercury 0.4 2.5 3.6 1.5 Chlorine cells gold mining operations combustion... 

Comparatively high mercury concentrations of 5.7 mg/kg FW in crayfish abdominal muscle from Lahontan Reservoir, Nevada, an area heavily contaminated with mercury from gold mining operations some decades earlier, and... 

Clams collected near gold mining operations had elevated concentrations of mercury (up to 0.64 mg Hg/kg FW) in soft tissues. Laboratory studies suggest that mercury adsorbed to suspended materials in the water column is the most likely route for mercury uptake by filterfeeding bivalve mollusks. 

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