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