This Week: Toxic Work

Children with horrific deformities and disabilities condemned to brief lives of unspeakable pain—this is the real cost of gold, as documented by Pulitzer Center grantees Larry Price and Rick Paddock in their report for National Geographic. Mercury poisoning is a cruel killer, but “millions of people in 70 countries across Asia, Africa, and South America have been exposed to high levels of mercury as small-scale mining has proliferated over the past decade,” writes Rick. “The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that at least 10 million miners, including at least 4 million women and children, are working in small-scale or ‘artisanal’ gold mines, which produce as much as 15 percent of the world’s gold” and which rely heavily on mercury.
http://pulitzercenter.org/blog/this-week-toxic-work