Announcement

Collapse
No announcement yet.

Ararat. Gold Fever And Health Disease

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Ararat. Gold Fever And Health Disease

    ARARAT. GOLD FEVER AND HEALTH DISEASE

    Panorama.am
    14:26 02/05/2008

    The environmental and health problems are becoming more widespread
    in Ararat city while the price of gold is getting higher and
    higher. Thought the environmental and health specialists try to prove
    that those problems are closely connected with more global things,
    people in Ararat are concerned with the damages and accidents caused
    by the industry.

    In the last decades modern technologies have improved and gold
    processing is being carried out with minimal risks. There are not
    modern technologies in "Ararat Gold Recovery Company" (AGRC).

    Industrial Ararat City has been founded in 1931 42km far from
    Yerevan. Yet in Soviet Times gold processing and cement companies were
    built in Ararat. The city has accumulated industrial, water supply,
    waste and greet areas decrease problems.

    The tailing dam of AGRC where the liquid mass is accumulated after
    gold is processed is consisted of dangerous materials for not only
    human health but for the city's fauna and flora.

    "The tailing dam is full of materials which cause serious health
    diseases: breathing organs, blood and hereditary diseases like monster
    birth," said Hakob Sanasaryan, the head of "Greens Union of Armenia".

    There are cyanide, cadmium, copper and arsenate in the tailing dam.

    In 13 November 2007 a poll was conducted through the people of Ararat
    to find out what percent of people are aware of the dangers and
    diseases caused by the tailing dam and what measures they do take to
    meet the ecological disease. 50 people take part in the poll and 100%
    of them is aware of the ecological disease caused by the tailing dam
    of the gold processing factory situated in their city. People are
    quite conscious that chemicals in the tailing dam are the enemies to
    their health. To the question what chemicals there are in the dam,
    they answered - cyanide.

    But people living in Ararat are not aware of worse chemicals which
    caused a monster birth in industrial city Lori. "People, today, talk
    about some other dangers, except getting concerned by the worst ones,
    for example if lead and molybdenum are in their minimal amounts they
    are useful for nature but much of them kills the fertility by 92%,"
    said H. Sanasaryan.

    The doctors of the only hospital in the city refused to name them
    but they affirmed that there are dangerous chemicals in the tailing
    dam. According to the official data provided by them the number of
    oncological diseases in the city gets higher every year: in 2004
    there were 211 cases and in 2007 290 oncological cases. They said
    that in the last four years not a single expertise was held either
    by the company owners or by the government. The doctors added that
    these are only registers cases.

    The health diseases of Ararat city can be seen even if you are
    not an expert, say the experts. "The cement factory is a real
    environmental crime together with the rest. It dismisses particles
    into the atmosphere which can have serious health effect on people,"
    said Philip Peck, international expert, Australia.

    If the chemical disease of the tailing dam is invisible and people
    need to be informed, the situation is quite different with the cement
    factory, as the black particles of cement coming out from the pipe
    are spread on the city.

    "If I could I would take my wife and my family and would leave
    Ararat. It is impossible to fight against so many health problems,-
    said 47-year-old Ashot Carukyan who lives in Ararat city,- I am
    thinking that my daughters are living in a toxic atmosphere, but I
    can not change my living place.

    Whereas they both are the sequences of the problem.

    The real doctor cures the problem and not its results.

    Reporter - Emma Sargsyan, YSU, Journalism department, MA student
Working...
X