If, as Robert Frost wrote, "nothing gold can stay," then mercury sticks around forever.
Mercury has an uncanny ability to bind to precious metals, and for millennia, people have used it to mine gold
and silver. Small-scale, or "artisanal," mining — which makes use of
mercury in this way — has recently become the leading source of mercury
pollution, several recent studies show.
Mining releases mercury into the air when it is burned off to isolate
gold from a chunk of rock or slurry; it also seeps into the soil and
rivers from water used in the process and runoff from rainwater,
contaminated by materials left behind from mining operations.
http://www.livescience.com/39982-surprising-mercury-pollution-sources.html#
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