Research by Human Rights Watch on small-scale gold mining shows how crucial health policies are. I have interviewed numerous women and girls in Mali, West Africa, who handled mercury on a daily basis for gold mining, but did not know about its dangers.
In Papua New Guinea, a doctor told us: "We have dozens of cases of mercury poisoning. [The patients] stare blankly at the wall. You cannot talk to them, they are not conversant, nothing. They are like zombies. And we have several cases that did not recover."
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