Despite the lure of striking it rich from AGM, it is a process wrought with danger, particularly because of the mercury used in the process. Miners like Samba work in teams to dig for gold. They remove hundreds of pounds of soil each day, carrying it from the mines in rice sacks to their shantytown homes a few kilometers away. Mondays and Fridays are reserved for sorting through this soil to extract any gold — it is believed that these days belong to the genies (evil spirits), so no one can work in the mines without being fatally injured. It is during this processing phase that mercury enters the picture.
read more... http://voices.nationalgeographic.org/2017/07/19/the-dirty-secrets-of-gold-mining-in-senegal/
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