World

Health Threat Grows In Cyanide Spill

February 15, 2000 / 9:05 AM EST / AP

Serbia warned on Tuesday of dangerous metal concentrations in an East European river already contaminated by a cyanide spill.

The Agriculture Ministry said laboratory tests showed considerably increased iron and copper levels in the Tisza river, where the cyanide spill has wiped out virtually all life. The cyanide poured into streams from a containment dam at a gold mine near the Romanian town of Baia Mare on Jan. 30.

The World Health Organization earlier had expressed concern that heavy metals such as lead and cadmium also might have escaped into the water, posing potentially a far greater health threat.

In Belgrade, Predrag Polic, head of the university's Chemistry faculty, said someone "may have abused the commotion around the cyanide spill to dump excessive lead quantities into the Tisza."

Lead -- among the world's top three pollutants -- degrades very slowly and can contaminate food for years. "This odorless metal is highly toxic and attacks the nervous system," Polic said.

Australia-based Esmeralda Ltd., co-owner of the Baia Mare gold mine, has denied responsibility for the cyanide spill, saying the extent of poisoning had been exaggerated. Romania has also said the damage was overstated and that it has suffered the most.

Hungary asked the United Nations for an independent team of experts to assess the spill. Major European donors have been asked to make more experts available for drawing up an immediate response to the spill.

Serbia's environment minister, Branislav Blazic, said there are fears that dead fish are piling up on the bottom of the Tisza, which flows into the Danube. By Tuesday afternoon, communities along the Serbian section of the river said they had retrieved and buried tons of poisoned fish.

Local villages were covered with signs warning people not to eat fish from the Tisza. Farms along the riverbank were cautioned not to use well water since the cyanide is likely to have seeped into groundwater.

Hunters and rangers reported seeing the first dead land animals, presumably poisoned after drinking from the river, the independent Beta news agency said.

Both Hungary and Serbia have demanded compensation from Romania, and the Serbs have threatened to sue Bucharest if their demands are not met.

Hungarian Premier Viktor Orban said Tuesday: "We are planning to initiate court action against the Romanian company and will also initiate one in Australia, against the parent company. And we are seriously considering one against the Romanian state," he said.

Also Tuesday, the Yugoslav Foreign Ministry issued a protest note to the Romanian Embassy in Belgrade. The note cited "serious damage caused by the destruction of fish in the Tisza and the hazard to the riverside."

One environmental expert has expressed optimism that the river will rebound.

"It's not an accumulative toxin," Donald Macalady, director of he Center for Environmental Risk Assessment at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colo., said Monday "It will take a while, but the river will recover."

Steve D'Esposito, president of the Mineral Policy Center, a private environmental group in Washington, D.C., that monitors mining, said the cyanide spill is comparable to a 1992 cyanide spill in Colorado. That spill cost $170 million to clean up.