The real cost of Gold

One ounce gold is currently worth $505. In Indian rupees one "tola" or ten grams of gold will cost you Rs 7485. But have you ever thought about the environmental cost of gold?

Consider a ring. For that one ounce of gold, miners dig up and haul away 30 tons of rock and sprinkle it with diluted cyanide, which separates the gold from the rock. Before they are through, miners at some of the largest mines move a half million tons of earth a day, pile it in mounds that can rival the Great Pyramids, and drizzle the ore with the poisonous solution for years.

The world's biggest mining company, Australia-based BHP Billiton, destroyed more than 2,400 acres of rainforest in Papua New Guinea .

Freeport, a mining company has generated six billion tons of waste in Papua, Indonesia. Much of that waste has already been dumped in the mountains surrounding the mine or down a system of rivers near a pristine rain forest that has been granted special status by the United Nations.

So the next time you buy a gold ornament think very, very carefully.
Does it cost too much ???