Mercury Pollution in the Amazon River

[placertogo]

Gold ore and fine gold can be processed without the use of toxic mercury. It would be a worthwhile venture to educate small scale miners on safe processes for mining and smelting gold.

http://thewatchers.adorraeli.com/20...on-in-amazon-prompts-state-of-emergency-peru/

 

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[AU_Solitude]

It's sad what the greed of humans can do Unfortunately, I don't think education is the short term answer, the countries best short term plan of action would be to target the individuals supplying the mercury.

 

[winners58]

Send in the military burn their villages and equipment throw the children's fathers into prison or work camps or scatter them back into the jungle.

Come on, Mercury is expensive, they don't waste it, most is squeezed back off the gold then the rest is driven off to form a clump then taken to the buyers
the buyers are the smelters, there has been major educational outreach, all registered buyers are now required to have filterers that capture most of the mercury fumes.
study's like this skew the results, if you look close only 1/3rd of the predatory fish were slightly over the UN standard, it didn't look at selenium binding
to neutralize the effect's in the body from mercury, the study shows the tolerable weekly intake of fish is mostly well below allowable limits.

River transport of mercury from artisanal and small-scale gold mining and risks for dietary mercury exposure in Madre de Dios, Peru - Environmental Science: Processes & Impacts (RSC Publishing)


does that justify Murder, I guess it does if the government gets money(US) to stop the artisanal and small scale miners from cutting down the rain forest
.
just more propaganda in Peru they had some raids last year even shut down the prostitute's, then passed some laws restricting the gas supply and logging,
there were protests 6 people were killed including one environmentalist, this news story is just more of the same.

 

[Oakview2]

Send the Sierra Fund down there, they can fix anything as long as you grease Izzy's greasy palms

 

[rodoconnor]

W58 , you're correct. A very slanted article . The watchers have a transparent agenda.

 

[benny]

"Peruvian Navy has begun to crackdown on mining operations directly on the river by bombing small boats such as this one. "
Well, that'll certainly take care of the mercury problem.

 

[Clay Diggins]

bombs good

mercury bad

 

[rodoconnor]

Peruvian Navy? I guess all that coke money could buy a couple of boats

 

[Hard Prospector]

Well they had to do something with all of those crappy Bay Liner boats sold at Costco back in the 90's

 

[aa battery]

Send the Sierra Fund down there, they can fix anything as long as you grease Izzy's greasy palms

ohhh yea

 

[spaghettigold]

https://www.researchgate.net/public...sanal_gold_mining_on_the_Madeira_River_Brazil

look at the resummee under table 4. Thats very well applicable to the american and also european dredgers that don,t use merc in the field and use more sophisticated dredges with higher recovery rates.In this case Finally a study whit a look at the bigger picture .
I didnt read it all yet.

Credits to rkc from nz

cheers

 

[aescal]

The use of mercury is rampant in the small and medium size mines. Unfortunately the Amazon miners have stuck to their tried and true methods (for them) of fine gold recovery. Mercury sells for about 200$ a kilo. I have a bout 3 kilos for testing retorts I have made and just to keep because.


In the small and medium ops, after the initial cleanout (most material is screened with kitchen strainers of various sizes) the smallest black sands are left over and placed in a either a cement mixer or paint can/rock tumbler combined with mercury. This rotates for several days and is later put into a skillet and left outside to burn off the mercury. This, as we know, eventually comes back to earth in rains and precipitation.

The artisianal miners put mercury straight into their pans and hand mix it. The mercury is then taken and put into a handkerchief and squeezed into a clean pan. That mercury is saved for use again, and the remaining in the kerchief burned in a skillet to recover the fine gold. This method puts more mercury directly into the water. You can take a magnifying glass and look at the black sands and water in the first pan and see tiny tiny naked to the eye goblets of mercury that were not captured by the cloth.

The biggest challenge is to educate miners on the process of classification. The notion here is that the more you move the more you recover. The crash boxes on most wash plants have grizzlys spaced 2-3 inches apart that feed directly into the sluices. Theres tons of dish plate size pancake rocks that move thru blowing out the riffles and damaging them. The fear is that if you classifly smaller, other than the investment, people might let a grape size nugget pass. When I asked how many grape size nuggets have been captured in xx years the answer is normally counted on one hand. I recommended classifying straight at the digsite before loading into the dump trucks. Again the fear is that gold stuck the bigger rocks will be missed. The tailing piles (they are enormous) we worked have good size rocks in them 4-6 inches diameter. It hard to convince miners that moving from 30% recovery to 60% recovery is a better idea and investment than doubling the amount of excavators, trucks, wash plants to double their clean out.

Ill try to upload some pics but my enterprise class internet (3mbps) is acting up like normal....

 

[aescal]

On a side note, the government agencies related to gold mining have been more proactive in mercury contamination, as well as businesses involved with mining. Many of the big gold buyers will not buy gold recovered with mercury, as their smelting plants are located in urban areas the health risks outweigh the profits. The mercury recovered gold is usually sold to smaller jewelers who still burn it off sans retort in urban areas. Here in Bolivia the Enviromental people come out to inspect mines and are pretty picky when it comes to mercury. If they catch an open air burn its usually a big fine (the two retorts I imported I sold to mines as decoration so they could say they capture their mercury if inspectors came along, Im pretty sure they are covered in cobwebs and dust by now). Having seen the ops first hand, I think showing people improved recovery in existing plants without mercury (classification, use of clean not turbid water, proper size grizzlys/riffles etc) could greatly reduce the dependence on mercury...

 

[spaghettigold]

Bonjour aescal

May i add a nugget trap to your list.
Instead of buying bombs against the small scalers,they could use the money on fine gold recovery education and buy back programs on every kilo merc that was recovered from the river bottom.The merc can be sold to mining companys that have proper equipment to use it.
But if the goal is to get them out enyway the merc problem is only a excuse. Here,the enviromentalists have also become an industrie and they love to dredge too.