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Article 11 - Volume 23/1&2 - 2013

Paper title:

Pollution cumulative effects on the environment in Roşia Montanămining area and neighborhoods (Romania) in the context of sustainable development

Author(s):

1 Babeş-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca

DOI:

10.4316/GEOREVIEW.2013.23.2.79

Pages:

94 - 99

Abstract:

In the present paper, we present the situation of one of the most polluted, but also very famous locality from Romania, Roşia Montană. Pollution is a serious problem for this place, because of its long history of mining, dating here from millennia. But a more dangerous form of pollution may be that produced by cyanide technology, one of the most cheap but also most poisonous method to obtain gold from ores. Because of the immense scale of the presumed project of RMGC, a Canadian company, the use of cyanide, supposed to be collected in a huge dam, with a capacity of approximately 250,000 tons of contaminated waste, represents a powerful chemical danger to the environment. And this is not the only aspect, even the most important, of the problems that affects or could affect the area in discussion.

Keywords:

Roşia Montană, mining, gold, cyanide, pollution, environment