Repost: Mercury's Poisonous, Profitable Role in the New Gold Rush

The town is awash in mercury, which even in small doses can damage the central nervous system and the lungs or cause birth defects. Children are especially vulnerable. At least a dozen businesses along Segovia’s main drag sell mercury to prospectors, ladling it out a few ounces at a time into small plastic bottles with blue screw tops. Mercury also comes in shiny, steel cylinders that hold 76.5 pounds of it, like those locked in a shed at Cardona’s mine. There, a few feet from a picnic table where workers gather for breaks, a dark and silvery slush of mercury, rock, and water flows from processing barrels into a wide cement gutter beside a mound of gray rock. Nearby, locals bathe their dogs in a creek, believing the mercury that fills it will cure mange.
http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-05-24/the-slippery-market-for-mercury