It’s the stuff of legend. For many, the word “cyanide” conjures images of mass suicides, illegal fishing in the Philippines and the murder of Rasputin. Pretty nefarious stuff.

But hydrogen cyanide is a valuable and arguably indispensable industrial chemical, particularly in gold mining.

Some 13% of all man-made cyanide is used to assist in removing gold and silver from low-grade ore; the rest is used to manufacture a wide range of products, from cosmetics to fire retardant and much else besides.

Intense media scrutiny of cyanide spills within the past decade has ensured that it is in mining that cyanide has found its modern infamy. But with the advent of the International Cyanide Management Code (ICMC), and a growing list of voluntary signatories, many questions remain unanswered. To wit: Will the measures that the ICMC stipulates make a difference?

The most infamous cyanide spill in recent memory occurred early on the evening of January 30, 2000, in Romania. There was a break in a dam encircling a tailings pond filled with mining byproducts at the Baia Mare mine in northwest Romania, near the border between Ukraine and Hungary. The cause of the spill is not known, although investigators suspect that a combination of rapidly melting snow and poorly designed containment facilities created ideal conditions for a disaster.

Whatever the case, the results were all too clear: 50 to 100 tonnes of cyanide and heavy metals spilled over the dam in a toxic brew of more than 100,000 cubic meters.

The deadly flow poured into the Sasar river, and for the next four weeks travelled through the Lapus, Somes, Tisza and Daube rivers, before reaching the Black Sea.

Hundreds of kilometers of river water were contaminated; water supply to 24 municipalities was interrupted. In Hungary alone, more than 1,250 tonnes of fish died.

Baia Mare brought international attention to the dangers of cyanide use in the resource sector, but it was by no means an isolated event.

Dr Terry Mudder, an internationally recognized expert on environmental science and engineering, and a founding member of www.cyantists.org, has assembled data pertaining to environmental incidents in the mining industry over the past 50 years. Mudder and his colleague Mike Botz found that 12 out of 67 environmental incidents involved cyanide, or about three incidents per decade globally.

Other groups put the number much higher. For example, Rainforest Information Center and the Goldbusters Coalition, which publish an online resource called Cyanide Incidents (here) report 34 incidents since 1997, or about 3 incidents per year. The disparity with Dr Mudder’s figures is perhaps cause for alarm.

There are, however, obvious differences between the two lists. Rainforest Information Center includes incidents at which no environmental damage was reported, whereas Dr Mudder’s list reported only spills of “meaningful” proportions with “impacts on the order of several thousand meters cubed.”

Compare such an incident with the first entry on Rainforest Information Center’s report: 

“DECEMBER, 2006 Alaska: Cyanide was found seeping this winter from a hillside next to the dam that holds back waste from Alaska's largest gold mine, the Fort Knox Mine near Fairbanks.”

The news report from which this entry was generated downplays the spill to the status of irrelevance. The article, found in Anchorage Daily News, concluded, “Tests show the lethal chemical didn't escape from site”.

One cyanide industry spokesperson, who spoke on condition of anonymity, argues that NGO’s like Oxfam and Rainforest Information Centre, are pushing an agenda that has zero tolerance for gold mining.

“Between you and I, there is an issue often with what NGOs report and it is difficult to get verification.  The NGOs tend to mention anything even very small incidents. I know for a fact some of the descriptions of these incidents are incorrect,” the source told me.

Whatever the number of incidents, it is obvious that disasters like Baia Mare have galvanized public opinion in favor of greater control of the use of cyanide.

“Baia Mare prompted an international outcry for establishment of a code for management of cyanide,” said Mudder. “Through a United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP) sponsored forum involving many stakeholders, the International Cyanide Management Institute (ICMI) was eventually formed along with a specific code for management of cyanide at gold mining operations.”

The code, which took nearly two years to develop, is formally called the "International Cyanide Management Code For the Manufacture, Transport, and Use of Cyanide In the Production of Gold" (ICMC). It is a voluntary measure; its development and maintenance are funded by mining companies.

Every three years, signatories to the ICMC must have all projects that utilize the cyanide process audited by an independent, third-party professional who meets the ICMI’s criteria for auditors. A company that does not have these operations audited within this timeframe loses its signatory status.

Once at the site, the auditor has a thorough mandate. Nine categories pertaining to the use of cyanide are covered, including production, storage and handling, transportation, operations, decommissioning, worker safety, emergency response, training and dialogue with the public.

Once an audit is complete, a Summary Audit Report is posted at the Cyanide Code website. The reports are a virtual blueprint of the uses and transportation of cyanide on any given project. Even the trucking companies involved in transporting the cyanide must be certified signatories to the code. Prior to 2002, no such provisions existed.

Dr Mudder, who was also involved with the UNEP group who wrote the code, believes its implementation has thus far been a success.

“The Cyanide Code has been in place now for several years and during that time there has not been a major environmental incident at a gold mining operation,” he told me.

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