Our planet is currently experiencing the largest gold rush in its history. With prices now dancing around $900/oz, there are an estimated 15-16 million Artisanal and Small scale gold Miners working in 55 developing countries around the world. ASM activities account for roughly 25% of all gold produced annually.

When droughts hit, wars destroy and economies collapse, mining is the only option for millions to survive. About 30% of subsistence gold miners are women (60%) in Africa, and it’s estimated that nearly 2 million children work in mines around the world.

95% of gold mined today is not nuggets, it’s dust, and to recover these microscopic flakes from ore, the small miners’ favored method is mercury amalgamation.

Here’s how mercury amalgamation works:  Say you have a bowl of ore containing gold dust.  If you add mercury (a liquid metal) and tumble it with the ore, the mercury will bond to and absorb the gold, which creates an amalgam.

But now, to separate the gold from the mercury, you’ll have to burn the amalgam, which most miners do out in the open, vaporizing the mercury and releasing it to the atmosphere, where it returns to the earth, threatening the health of the miners, their communities and wildlife.

While industrialized nations are reducing, regulating or banning mercury use, efforts have increased to market mercury stockpiles to developing nations.  An estimated one third of annual mercury consumption is attributed to small scale gold mining activities, with 1000 tons of mercury being released into the environment annually from gold mining.

Mercury, and its more lethal derivative methyl mercury (mercury that has bio accumulated in the environment and proteins that all citizens of a country consume), attacks the central nervous system and organs in humans and particularly threatens fetal development.

In Suriname (north of Brazil) in South America, a 2003 study of 54 mothers and their newborns, taken from a cross section of ethnic, urban and rural populations showed that 36% of the mothers and 95% of their babies had elevated levels of mercury in their bloodstream.  Suriname is the size of the US state of Georgia, with a population of less than half a million, but it’s estimated that their gold mining activities release 10 -20 tons of mercury annually.

Children exposed to mercury before birth may exhibit problems with mental development and coordination, including how they think, learn and problem-solve later in life.  These neurological symptoms may appear similar to cerebral palsy or autism. Developmental and neurological damage can be irreversible for fetuses and young children.

References: Marcello Veiga of UNIDO’s Global Mercury Project.  Rickford Vieira, WWF-Guianas.  Mohan, et al, Lands Hospital, Paramaribo, Leiden University Medical Center, The Netherlands. Environmental Defense’s Oceans Alive Campaign.

Photos by Kristina Shafer.

Small ball of amalgam (gold absorbed by mercury) after excess mercury has been squeezed through a cloth.

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