In a village in the Ashanti region last year, I met a small, shy 9-year-old boy—let’s call him Zachary. Zachary was not going school but working at a gold processing site. He told me how he collects the gold particles: “I spread the mercury with my hand. Then I tie it up with a rag…. Then I come out with gold and mercury. You put it in the fire and smoke it.”
Mercury is a liquid, shiny, fascinating substance. One of its amazing qualities is that it can attract gold particles and form a gold-mercury mix. If that mix, or amalgam, is burned, the mercury turns to gas and leaves behind pure raw gold. It is cheap and easy to mine gold this way.
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