8DTiszaRiverPage



Tisza River Q1: What was the disaster, when was it, where was it?  A waste pond reservoir owned by AURUL, a gold mining company, burst and leaked into a nearby creek called the Danube on Sunday the 30th of January, 2000 at 10 p.m. The waste pond contained heavy metals and a high level of cyanide. Cyanide is a potentially deadly gas and is very dangerous when consumed by humans. If a person accidently or purposely consumed cyanide the effects would be life threatening. It is very hard to detect cyanide poisoning but the effects are much the same as suffocation. The cells are deprived of oxygen and your skin may get cherry red or pink blotches. Some side effects from cyanide poisoning are general weaknesses, bizarre behavior, excessive sleepiness, headaches, dizziness, seizures and the cyanide poisoning may even lead to a coma. Believe it or not but there are traces of cyanide inside apricot pips and a special type of potatoes called cassava. To get these heavy metals out of our rock piles, AURAL, uses cyanide throughout the process. The company uses enrichment technology to do this, but unfortunately at the end of the process all the cyanide and heavy metals are stored inside the reservoir and when the reservoir leaked it caused immense trouble.

Unfortunately the materials polluted all of Danube creek and didn’t stop there. From the Danube creek the polluted “water” then travelled to Szamos river killing all the fish and wild life in its in way Cyanide is 1000 times more poisonous to a fish than to a human, the poor little things didn’t stand a chance. From Szamos River, it travelled down to the Tisza River and sadly by the 4th of February the leaked waste pond had completely polluted the Tisza River. On February 1st, 2000 the leakage from the reservoir was repaired but the lake was still very polluted. Dead fish could be found floating on the “water” and signs had been put up surrounding the lake warning swimmers not to swim and fishermen not to fish.

This is a photograph of the dead fish.

The river was classified very polluted having added 1000 m3 of cyanide and heavy metals. I was later found out that 80% of the fish had died. All the water usage from the river was forbidden and many of the water birds including blue herons and bald eagles and mammals such as foxes, deer and otters were effected either from drinking from the poisonous or eating the dead poisoned fish. This incident was considered the worst disaster in Europe since 1986. A total of 2 million of Hungary’s people lost their drinking water.

But then, on February 7th there was another spill into the river, not much information is known but the second spill did not have such a large concentration of cyanide. Let us make sure that all companies learn from AURALS numerous mistakes and hope that your drinking water stays clean.

This is the map of the Tisza River.   By Madeline McDonald 8D 

[|www.rec.org/REC/Programs/PublicParticipation/DanubeInformation/Tisza.html] [|www.ce-review.org/00/7/kiss7.html]
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