Cyanide isused to extract very low percentages of gold from mine waste tailings, where other technologies cannot be used. But the escape of toxic cyanide from Aurul at Baia Mare resulted in environmental devastation affecting Romania, Hungary, Yugoslavia, and, to a lesser degree, Bulgaria. Fishermen from the Tisza River collect tons of dead fish from the water. At least 100,000 cubic meters of wastewater contaminated with cyanide and heavy metals spilled into the Lapus River through breaks in the inner and outer retaining walls of the Aurul reprocessing plant. The initial cyanide concentration in the Lapus River was estimated at 400 times the European Union limit for drinking water, according to Romanian authorities.
Figures provided by Hungarian authorities indicate a concentration three times higher.
The total quantity of cyanide released, says Dr. Peter Literathy, from the Hungarian Institute for Water Pollution Control, is between 110 and 120 tons. The Romanian figures are between 40 and 100 tons, according to Dr. Lucian Constantinescu, from the Romanian Waters company. An attempt to correlate the measurements made by Romania and Hungary had little success. The attempt to correlate figures with the Yugoslav counterparts was even less successful, due to the political isolation of the country following the Kosovo war. It now lies within the mandate of the various international teams created in the aftermath of the cyanide spill to provide an authoritative overview.