Will gold mining ever be safe?

Gold is one of the world’s largest categories of consumer goods, with £86 billion being spent on gold jewellery in 2010. But the mining and extraction of gold is a destructive and toilsome process from the beginning. Two-thirds of newly mined gold comes from open-pit mining, through which the production of a single ounce requires 30 tons of mine waste.
Artisanal and small-scale workers make up a huge 90% of the labour force, but governments tend to give the large-scale industry preferential mining rights, and small-scale miners are pushed into operating informally and illegally, in demoralising working conditions with atrocious health and safety measures.
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