Today, mercury still poisons people. At least 13 million small-scale gold miners in Asia, Africa, and Latin America work with mercury daily, using it to extract the gold from raw ore. A doctor in Papua New Guinea told us about some of his patients, who were gold miners: “We have dozens of cases of mercury poisoning. ….They 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.”
Today, Japan has a chance to say “never again.” A global treaty on mercury is being finalized to protect people and the environment from mercury. Next month, governments from around the world will come together in Switzerland for a final round of negotiations, which started in 2010 under the auspices of the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)
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