One of them was “Michelle,” a 15-year-old girl from Camarines Norte who has been processing gold with mercury since she was 8, unaware that mercury can have permanent damaging effects on health, especially for children. She described to me how she mixes the mercury into the gold ore to create an amalgam, and then holds the amalgam over a torch to burn off the mercury and retrieve the raw gold. She now often suffers spasms, which can be a symptom of mercury poisoning. In her village, I saw a white stream of mercury-contaminated water flowing into the local river.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2016/11/25/regulate-small-gold-mines-too
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