Medidas de prevención ante la contaminación de cianuro producida por la minería ecuatoriana

Abstract

The environmental contamination caused by cyanide (CN) in Ecuadorian mining has brought serious and irreparable consequences to the environment and the health of living beings. Gold extraction is an ancient form of mining. It is a highly resistant material, because it has the potential to resist most chemicals that can cause discoloration, except cyanide. The process at the industrial level highlights the elimination of mercury as an extracting compound, replacing it completely with cyanide to leach the gold. This process begins with the transport of the extracted ore to the leaching heaps or Environmental Development Plan (PAD), where the material is washed with a cyanide solution at a concentration of 50 ppm in order to dissolve the gold and obtain it in solution for pumping it to the processing plant, where the metal is precipitated using zinc powder and the solution without gold (or Barren) is recirculated to the PAD, thus completing a closed cycle and reducing the amount of cyanide discharged into the environment. In this research, measures were developed to prevent cyanide contamination caused by mining, through social participation in the care and preservation of nature and good living, for which a descriptive and qualitative research methodology was used. Bibliographic references were used to obtain information to prevent contamination by CN in Ecuador, which causes lethal effects on our health.