Refined gold jewelries may be a boom for the fashion world, but destructive for the environment – as a highly toxic chemical compound, sodium cyanide is used to refine the precious metal. At present, 98 per cent of the Australian mines use it!
To find an alternative solution to this, without disturbing the gold-market economy, Tasmanian scientists are testing a new non-toxic, eco-friendly process for extracting gold from ore. The University of Tasmania researchers are using thiosulfate as not only a non-toxic alternative to sodium cyanide, but also a lot more cheaper compound.
