As well as funding Colombia’s five-decade conflict, "blood gold" has made of Colombia one of the nations with the highest rates of mercury contamination in Latin America. It is followed closely by Peru, where the government has been fighting for years against the illicit extraction of gold.
Illegal miners use mercury to separate the gold from rock and then dump the chemical into water streams. They often handle the neurotoxin with their bare hands and inhale its fumes when it is burned off.
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