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Wednesday, July 30, 2014

Streams poisoned by mercury: A legacy of gold mining

Mercury is an efficient magnet for gold. The early California miners routinely lined their sluices with the silvery globules to amalgamate the precious metal. Up to 10 percent of an estimated 65,000 tons of mercury extracted from the Coast Range between 1850 and 1920 was lost to streams in the Coast and Sierra mountains. Modern gold miners working suction dredges still find pockets of the Argonauts' quicksilver lodged deep in the "guts" of rivers.
http://www.calgoldrush.com/graphics/mercury.html 

Read more here: http://www.calgoldrush.com/graphics/mercury.html#storylink=cpy

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