Pollution Has No Borders: Tisza Case

“It looks but not”, one reply from professor to my comment increased my curiosity to know more about the Tisza river.

Due to the spillage of the cyanide in the river, almost environment of this river was finished in the year 2000. That incident made the tide of dead fish in Tisza, known as the Hungarian river, which play very important place in the local people life. Although the Tisza’s environmental condition is now acceptable, it faced many things in the past.

The most important thing is, the source of pollution was not at Hungary. It was at Romania, neighboring country to Hungary, due to that Hungarian faced this pollution. Of course, pollution has no borders, generally quoted for the air pollution, true for water pollution too. One more important thing is, the company related with this spillage was Australian and working on the gold mining at Romania’s north ‘Baia-Mare’ region.

Tisza at Szeged

Gold cyanidation is one of the common and cheap techniques used for gold extraction but toxic nature of cyanide make it controversial and results in ban on its application in many countries. But still it is in use in few countries for gold extraction from the low grade ore due to cheaper prices and effectiveness of cyanides.

This cyanide technology for the extraction of non ferrous metals from rock generally needs huge quantity of water. After use, the cyanide contaminated water was stored for the use of it one more time. The incident happened due to rupture of the reservoir dam which contained this used water.

One incident became responsible for the big damage of environment in few countries but mostly Hungary as a chemical disaster. The success of ‘cyanide free Hungary’ campaign resulted in the ban of cyanide mining in Hungary, voted by Hungarian parliament at December 2009. But finally pollution has no borders.