environmental impact of gold mining and processing
Gold Mining and Processing -- The High Cost of Gold Jewelry. some other tidbits about gold stuff... though beware the sprinkle of quick statistics... ie, one page there says, "smelting adds about 142 million tons of sulfur dioxide to the atmosphere every year -- 13 percent of total global emissions." this doesn't say a lot about gold-specific problems: smelting is not a gold-only process. etc. And then there's the fact that most gold is used in industry: circuit boards, cell phones, stuff. etc. (in fact, one of the reasons that recycling cell phones is economically viable, to the point where companies will buy old cell phones to recycle them, is that there is a bunch of gold in them when you get tons of phones.)
ok, I was completely wrong with the part about "most gold is used in industry." of gold mined in the United States, the distribution goes something like: "jewelry and arts, 85%; electrical and electronics, 7%; dental, 3%; and other, 5%." (from the USGS's summary, pdf/google cache).
