Assessment of Potentially Toxic Cyanide from the Gold and Copper Mine Ore Tailings of Karnataka, India

Abstract

Concerns have raised that, due to its continuous use in the industrial application and through natural resources every inhabitants on the earth are continuously exposed to cyanide in everyday life. Since, the huge amount of cyanide processing ore tailings of Gold and Copper mine industries were dumped into the subsurface environment causes serious hazards to existing livelihood. The study intended with spectrophotometric estimation of cyanide through standard distillation from the gold and copper ore tailings of Karnataka, India. The cyanide content of the samples was determined with a range between 20-260 mg/kg from the different mine ore tailings samples. The highest concentrations of cyanide were observed in the ore tailings of Hatti Gold Mine Ltd. New Plot (HGML-New plot), Hatti than the ore tailings of Kennedy line dump of Kolar and Copper ore tailings of Ingaldhal. Since, simple and complex Cyanide compounds can release the extremely toxic free cyanides (hydrogen cyanide, and cyanide ion); there is a need to continuous monitoring of cyanide levels in the ore tailings of Gold Mine Industries.