Mercury pollution is a major byproduct in small-scale and illegal mining operations, says our correspondent. For example, in the gold-mining center of Segovia, a town of 44,000 people just north of Medellín, mercury levels are so high that the air tastes metallic. Segovia is known to have the world’s highest per capita mercury pollution, which is reported to cause a host of ailments sometimes leading to death, according to British medical journal The Lancet. Not far away in Buritica, which has seen an influx of illegal gold mining on the heels of investment from Canadian company Continental Gold, our correspondent recently spoke with farmers who said the mercury levels caused crops to wither and die.
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