The hidden costs of gold: mercury poisoning blights mining communities

Trembling and irritable, at times psychotic, the hat makers of 19th
 century England were know to be a bit odd, at best.

Separating fur from animal skins, they washed them in a compound
 called mercury nitrate, a process that released vapours into steaming 
air already choked with fumes.



In the poorly ventilated workshops of the industrial revolution, 
prolonged exposure led to mercury poisoning and eventually the phrase,
'as mad as a hatter'.



The types of conditions that put industrial workers at risk of mercury 
poisoning have long been banned in the west, with the EU going as far
as forbidding the sale of mercury thermometers to the public in 2008.



But in Africa, hazardous conditions still exist.

 Small scale miners use mercury to extract gold across the continent,
 with the numbers rising as the precious metal has tripled in price, 
from $513 an ounce in 2005 to $1700 this year.



Used as a cheap and fast method of extracting gold, the mercury 
attaches itself to the metal, making it easier to separate it from 
rocks and other material. Fast, simple, and intuitive, it’s a popular 
and relatively cheap method for miners with little capital.

Most of it is then released into the environment, with 70 per cent of it 
usually finding its way into water systems, posing long-term risks for 
mine workers and communities who live downstream or downwind from
 areas being mined.



'Gold mining communities are especially vulnerable' says Carolyn
 Vickers of the World Health Organisation. 'It gets into the food
 chain, into the fish women eat and then passes into the baby in the
 womb, which impacts the development of their brains and affects their 
ability to think.'


Communities in Africa are especially vulnerable, says Abiola 
Olanipekun, Chief Environmental Scientist at Nigeria’s Ministry of 
Environment, as the gold boom has been most pronounced there.

UN treaty on mercury?

'Africa
 needs alternatives (to mercury) so that the environment and people's 
futures aren't jeopardised. '

This week, Olanipekun joined representatives from 120 governments
 around the world at the headquarter of the United Nations Environment
 Programme (UNEP) in Nairobi, where negotiations towards a global 
treaty on mercury, the most poisonous, naturally occurring substance 
known to man, are taking place.



Known as the Intergovernmental negotiating committee, its main aims are to:

- Reduce the supply of mercury onto the market



- Reduce mercury demand for products, processes and international trade

- Reduce atmospheric emission of mercury

- Addressing mercury-containing waste and remediation of contaminated sites

The participants are working towards a treaty by 2013, and have 
already drawn up a draft text. Calling for restrictions in the mercury 
trade and a prohibition on the dumping of mercury waste in developing 
countries, it emphasised that financial and technical assistance 
needed to be given to developing countries.



But even then, implementing it is not expected to be easy. 

The international trade in the toxic metal is largely unregulated,
 meaning much of it finds its way into Africa through batteries, light
bulbs and other products shipped to the continent as waste.

The surge in small-scale gold mining

Meanwhile, most of the 55 countries where small-scale gold mining is
 widespread lack the political will and the capacity to prevent it from
 falling into the hands of 10 to 15 million poor miners who use it.

'A lot of countries are still in denial as to the affects of AGSM 
(artisanal and small scale gold mining)', says Ludovic Bernaudat of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). 

Artisanal mining releases 1,000 tonnes of mercury into the environment 
every year, which accounts for 30 per cent to 40 per cent of the world’s man-made mercury pollution, a situation that has got worse over the past decade.



Like Canada’s Klondike gold rush, which caught the imagination of
 100,000 amateur miners during the 1890s, hundreds of thousands of 
ordinary people across Africa have flocked to gold fields from 
Tanzania to Nigeria, where they use mercury liberally, often at risk
to their own health.

'It occurs in rural areas where few alternatives exist for livelihood 
options. It’s done mostly informally, so there is little information
 as to the number of them and the amount of mercury released into the
 environment' adds Bernaudat.

However, 'It is an attractive alternative income' for a lot of people
 says Kevin Telmer, a geochemist at the University of Victoria in 
Canada, meaning that it is unrealistic to expect people to stop using 
mercury unless realistic alternatives are offered to them.



In Burkina Faso, he says a government survey found that 600,000 people were living on gold mining settlements. Of these about 1/3 were 
directly involved in gold mining, producing roughly half a gram of 
gold a day.



'The miners form small groups and get about 75-80 per cent of the
international price,' he says, making an average of $5,000 a year. High
 costs mean they save about 10 per cent he says, which is 'a higher savings rate than in the U.S. or Europe.'

His organisation, the Artisanal Gold Council, is working with small
scale gold miners in developing countries such as Burkina Faso to
 formalise their businesses, helping them to draw up business plans and
adopt safer mining practices. 

It is hoped that doing so will lead to the implementation of pollution 
prevention measures that limit mercury contamination of water sources.



The introduction of safer gold mining practices such as such as
 gravity separation, which simply uses gravity to separate heavier gold
 from the rest of the ore without using chemicals such as mercury, is
 one such way. Using containers called 'retorts', which capture the
mercury vapor, is another method. 



However, making the industry more environmentally friendly still does
 not address another proble: child labour. 

One million children work in artisanal gold mining in Asia, Latin
 America, and Africa, according to the International Labour 
Organisation.



'Governments have done far too little to protect children from mercury 
exposure and to end child labour in artisanal mining,' says Juliane 
Kippenberg, senior children's rights researcher at Human Rights Watch.



'The treaty should not only address mercury as a technical 
environmental issue, but also as a right-to-health issue. With this
 treaty, governments can save hundreds of thousands of children from 
mercury exposure, and ultimately, from poisoning.'

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