The Duke team looked at the wide-reaching effects of mercury contamination from gold-mining operations in Peru's southern Amazon region of Madre de Dios. However, the same mining practices are present throughout South America, as well as in Africa and Asia.
As the price of gold has soared during the past decade, thousands of Peruvians—mostly from the Amazon and sierra region of Cusco—have embraced artisanal small-scale gold mining to supplement their income. Mercury is used to bind loose flakes and bits of gold ore into hard chunks that can be more easily extracted from soil and sediment, and then burned off with blowtorches once the chunks are in hand.
The study found that the miners and their families are highly vulnerable to the impacts of mercury, with limited knowledge of mining's environmental or human health effects. Rarely do they have adequate safeguards to limit the release of mercury into the air, soil or water, the researchers said.
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