"Mitigating the Environmental Impact: Mercury-Free Solutions in Artisanal Gold Mining"

 Gold Artisanal Mining: A Major Cause of Global Mercury Pollution

Mitigating the Environmental Impact Mercury-Free Solutions in Artisanal Gold Mining

Small-scale gold mining is the primary contributor to global mercury pollution, providing income crucial for approximately 15 million miners and their families worldwide.

1. Mercury Use in Gold Mining
2. Soil and Water Contamination due to Mercury Used in Gold Mining
3. Gold Mining's Environmental Destruction on a Global Scale
4. Positive News about Gold Mining

1.Mercury Use in Gold Mining:

Many of these miners use mercury, which acts as a magnet for gold, binding with both mercury and gold to form an amalgam that is burned, vaporizing the mercury, and leaving behind pure gold, often disposed of in soil or waterways.

2.Soil and Water Contamination due to Mercury Used in Gold Mining:

Mercury fate is to condense and settle into soil and waterways, transforming into methylmercury upon being ingested by fish, bioaccumulating through the food chain until it becomes unsafe in seafood such as tuna, reaching consumers globally through supermarkets and restaurants.

3.Gold Mining's Environmental Destruction on a Global Scale:

Worldwide, destructive mining methods using mercury lead to habitat destruction, poisoning of the environment, and the global food chain. In Madre de Dios, southeastern Peru, uncontrolled artisanal gold mining led to a mercury emergency and rapid deforestation of vast forested areas.

Mitigating the Environmental Impact Mercury-Free Solutions in Artisanal Gold Mining

4.Positive News about Gold Mining:

The good news in the Amazon rainforest is that over the past five years, Pure Earth has successfully implemented mercury-free, simple training and began reforesting degraded rainforest lands due to artisanal gold mining. Pure Earth started this work with small-scale gold miners in Pedro Yáñez Fontes, training him and his miners in gravity separation using water to separate gold, then Pure Earth executed the first-ever reforestation project to rehabilitate rainforests degraded by gold mining in Peru under Pedro's license. Through improving our interventions and continued collaboration with local populations, government miners, and community leaders, we can scale up and support thousands of mercury-free small-scale gold miners in Madre de Dios to help restore valuable Amazonian lands that have been deforested.

The Source of the News:

How illegal gold mining threatens biodiversity in the Amazon