Journalists visit Cyanide spillage scene

Residents of Akekoase, a farming community of over 200 people in the Wassa West District of the Western Region, have appealed to government to protect their lands from total destruction by mining.

They said the activities of mining companies in the district were destroying their land and water bodies and taking away their source of livelihood.

They made the call when a team of journalists, at the instance of the Ghana Chamber of Mines, went there to ascertain the cause of the cyanide spillage and subsequent remedial measures taken to restore normalcy.

The residents contended that since the spillage had rendered them vulnerable to diseases, the mining companies should resettle and compensate them adequately.

An Accra private newspaper broke the story on the spillage of cyanide into River Asuman on October 22.

After the publication, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) issued a statement saying emergency response procedures like the detoxification of cyanide were being implemented and that residents had been cautioned to stay away from the river and its surrounding areas.

Cyanide, a naturally occurring compound, is extremely poisonous. It is a white, crystalline compound with a bitter odour used in extracting gold from low-grade ore, electroplating and casehardening of steel.

It can get into the human body through ingestion or absorbed through the pores on the skin. In the human body, it extracts all oxygen from the lungs, leaving the person short of breath. It can lead to death if ingested in large amounts.

The Chief of Abekoase village, Nana Moloba Nyameke told the journalists that they should be relocated because they were afraid of staying in the area.

He said he personally had to send one person to the hospital after she drank water from the river.

According to him, on the morning of October 16, personnel of the Goldfields Ghana Limited (GGL) came to the village to tell them to refrain from using water from the river since there had been a leakage from a pipe at its leach pad upstream.

Nana Nyameke said the GGL immediately provided them with a water tank, with a promise to provide them a borehole, which they were digging.

He said residents who went to the riverside that morning found dozens of dead fish floating and not knowing the cause some jumped in the river and picked some of the fish.

The chief asked for doctors to be sent there to ascertain the health threat to the people.

Nana Nyameke said even if the water were declared safe for consumption, the residents would not drink it.

As at the time journalists left the village, a tanker was supplying water to the villagers and a borehole was being dug for them.

Some of the residents complained about nausea while some had skin rashes, believed to have been caused by contact with the contaminated water.

The journalists could not reach the other village, Huniso, affected by the cyanide spillage because of the poor condition of the road. It had been recently graded by GGL and parts of it had become muddy from recent rain.

Meanwhile GGL said the spillage had no effect on public health or long-term damage to the river system.

Mr Tim Buchanan, Environmental Manager, said following the discovery of the leakage, residents of both communities- Abekoase and Huniso - were asked to refrain from drinking from the river until water quality sampling could verify that no public safety threat existed.

He said the incident was reported to the EPA and water quality sampling on the same day verified that the spillage had no effect on public safety.

Mr Buchanan said the concentrations of cyanide detected in the river had no effect on it and did not alter or damage it, adding that the dead fish in the river were the result of detoxificant applied to the river to neutralize the residual pools of the leakage.

He said the number of dead fish picked up in the river was about 50 which he handed over to the EPA for analysis, but residents claimed they saw about 200 dead fish.

Mr Buchanan said the amount of leakage, about 680 cubic metres or 200 kilogrammes of sodium cyanide, was a small solution spillage, and would have no effect on the life forms in the river and plants around it.

He explained that cyanide degrades in the natural environment extremely quickly to its constituents - carbon and nitrogen - and has no lingering effect known to science.

Mr. Buchanan said cyanide when found naturally at small concentrations was not stable in nature for a significant period at concentrations high enough to cause harm to the public or wildlife.

"Medical professionals understand that cyanide has no cumulative effects on living organisms including humans and has no connection with cancer, miscarriages, nervous problems or any other health condition.

The human body quickly breaks down cyanide to its natural components."

He said following the incident, the GGL had made modifications to its structural designs to forestall future accidents.

Journalists, who were conducted around the Tarkwa mine where the spill emanated from, found out that one of the pipelines at the company's leach pad - where the gold is extracted using cyanide, had been disjointed.

At the time the journalists were being conducted round the mines work was going on new infrastructure to ensure that no such incident happened again.

Mr Buchanan said the EPA and Mines Inspectorate were on the site on the day of the incident and samples taken by the EPA for analysis showed that there was no contamination by heavy metals as a result of the spillage.

The team could, however, not reach the management of the Satellite Goldfields Limited (SGL), the second mining company that hit the headlines for cyanide spillage on October 28 at Akyempim in the Mpohor Wassa East District.