Gold in our new world
A discourse on Gold - by our Correspondent
There are millions of people like this old miner who will be too willing to share in his puzzle and satisfy their curiosity as to the use of gold in life at all. Many people are of course aware of the fact that since aeons began, gold had been a symbol of love, art, wealth and power because of its lustre, beauty, monetary superiority and per- haps its rarity. It is its universal desir- ability that has contributed to its pivotal role in the social, cultural and economic milieu of mankind. But that is not all.
Gold has now been found useful in certain areas of electronic and telecommunications, architecture and housing, scientific research and industrial production and medicine. In medicine, gold has provided a much-sought-after safe and permanent cure for Rheumatoid Arthritis, a crippling disease which afflicts over eight million people throughout the world. For a long time, certain chemicals containing gold have been used on a limited scale for the treatment of rheumatoid arthritis, namely Myocrisin (ie. Sodium gold-thiomalate) and Solgano (ie. Sodium gold-thioglucose) which have been known to have serious and dangerous side effects and less able to contain the disease.
Now a new gold-based drug called Ridura has been approved for marketing by a US drug company, Smith Kline Beckman after 15 years of research and trials with arthritis sufferers. American pharmaceutical sources quote Blaine Sutton, a director of the company, as saying "Ridura which is orally taken is capable of alleviating the pains and inflammation of arthritis by reducing swellings, stiffness and joint aches, the characteristic symptoms of the disease, without any severe side effects at all."
Gold is also being used in dentistry and world consumption of gold for dental treatment is estimated at nearly 1.7 million troy ounces. Another gold incubators are indispensable pieces of equipments for saving lives and the temperature control of such equipment, which is essential for avoiding health care complications, is operated by gold-plated discs inserted into the electronic circuits of the device. Many other life-supporting systems are now employing these vital gold discs.
In engineering, gold-coated switches are being used in the production of machine tools, data processing equip- ment, telecom devices, military hard- ware components and several other electronic control systems.
The use of special pastes produced from mixtures of gold and glass powders are invaluable in building of electronic circuits. Gold wires, gold conductors, and gold accessories are gaining wide applications in industry.
Golden bathrooms are becoming a fashionable vogue among American and European luxury homes where wash basins, wall accessories, tubs, shower fittings and bathroom fixtures are being fashioned with polished 24-carat gold. Thus apart from its traditional coinage and monetary uses, gold is finding new and varied uses which hopefully may satisfy the curiosity of the old miner.
The GOLD NEWS, a monthly publication of the Gold Institute, the Washington-based international association of gold mining, refining, and marketing industries, has reported that "the electronics industry's consumption of gold grew by 18% worldwide to a total of 3.9 million troy ounces over the past year." The publi- cation adds that "the total demand of gold by Japan alone has been estimated to expand to 9 million troy ounces by the end of the year which is reckoned to be the highest gold consumption.
In scientific research, gold has found novel uses as a catalyst, that is a sub- stance which can reduce the time for certain chemical processes to take place. This is exemplified by the use of gold in this way for the production of vinyl acetate which is a base material for special adhesives and sealants used in the automobile manufacturing industry.
At a conference in Florida organised by the American Chemical Society in May this year, several research revelations were made about the increasing role that gold is playing in organic chemical processes of industrial and commercial importance. In the control of environmental pollution, the University of Colorado in the US has developed a new device which uses a gold catalyst component to detect poisonous substances such as carbon dioxide, formic acid, formaldehyde, etc, in the atmosphere, a discovery which has been rated revolutionary with wide and useful applications in industrial production.
In architecture, gold-coated glasses are employed in glazing to reflect the heat of the sun's rays away from buildings during summer and reflect heat into the building in cold weather. This is possible due to the unique property of gold metal to reflect the heat rays of the sun while able to transmit visual rays. Thus architects envisage a new way to reduce air- conditioning and winter-heating costs in homes and offices. Recently, the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating and Air-conditioning Engineers awarded an energy conservation prize to the architects of a 28-floor office building completely encapsulated in gold-coated glass in Edmonton, Canada, in a locality where it said summer temperatures reach 90°C while winter temperatures drop to - 40°C very often.
Golden bathrooms are becoming a fashionable vogue among American and European luxury homes where wash basins, wall accessories, tubs, shower fittings and bathroom fixtures are being fashioned with polished 24-carat gold.
Thus apart from its traditional coinage and monetary uses, gold is finding new and varied uses which hopefully may satisfy the curiosity of the old miner whose puzzle inspired me to produce this feature. The demand for gold is therefore set to push up as industrial requirement develops and increases. But despite these novel applications of the magic of gold, the consumption of gold for jewellery continues to increase, by about 37% over the past year to 26.3 million troy ounces with most of them.
