When I researched mercury use in Ghana, I watched miners mix liquid mercury in pans filled with ore in order to attract the gold particles. They then held this gold-mercury amalgam over an open fire to burn off the mercury and retrieve the raw gold. Even children were working with mercury. One of them, 12-year-old “Kwame,” told me: “I burn it on my own, where I get fire, at my mother’s house or any place.” Kwame carried a small bottle of mercury with him at all times. He and his fellow miners had never been told about its dangers.
https://www.hrw.org/news/2017/03/29/ghana-ratifies-mercury-convention
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