[DallasMike]

This amount of NaCN is NOTHING!!

Agreed. My first job out of college was as a chemist/chemical engineer in a plating facility. I did all the chemical ordering and we easily went through 2000 pounds of cyanide every month. Foundries that do heat treating have vats with literally tons of cyanide in each one.

That's not to say that 7 pounds wouldn't be a danger in a local water supply though -- but Iraq is a LONG way from here.

[TaMoDee]

Thanks for the backup, ChemEngr. I'am a PetEngr of some vintage!

[commish]

did all the chemical ordering and we easily went through 2000 pounds of cyanide every month.

And how much of this did you keep stored in YOUR HOUSE?

[tcuoohjohn]

takes about 7 grams of cyanide in its solid form to kill you ( nickle is about 5 grams). In solution it takes about 600 parts per million to have any effect and about 1200 parts per million to insure lethality. If you dumped 7 pounds of cyanide in a water resevoir it better be a very damn small one. As the water treament guys say...dilution is the solution.

[Rebelbase]

I worked with a cowboy geologist once who told me about a bootstrap gold mill he ran in northern Mexico '79-81.

He used cyanide to separate the gold from the ore. The plant had a wastewater leak that flowed into a stream. For a good 300 yards downstream of where the leak entered the stream he said the banks were littered with dead birds and small animals that drank the streamwater.