Muhammed Ali
All That Giltters
What is Gold Mining?
When someone says gold mining, your first thoughts may be of the old days in California where the gold rush was prevalent. What you did not know was that Gold mines also run throughout the East Coast, mostly in the state of North Carolina (United States Department of the Interior). Gold mines are also found in countless places around the world like in Africa, Europe, and India. The European colonizing powers recognized the gold mines and conquered the areas where gold and precious gems were abundant. Almost everyone dreams of owning all the gold in the world, but did you know that gold may be killing us, literally?
Gold in the water
The main type of mining method used today is placer mining. When you put a filter in a stream, you filter out gold and other sediments contained in the river. Water is an essential part of gold mining because most gold mines are found near groundwater. When a miner tries to tap into the ores, he/she usually exposes the groundwater, which causes a high chance for contamination.
According to the Fraser Institute, about 20%-30% of all the gold mined in the world is from artisanal mining, small-scale operations. Amalgamation, which is metal extraction from ore, uses mercury, which is toxic and deadly to almost all organisms. Due to poor management, this mercury leaks into the groundwater. According to the United Nations Environment Program, “small-scale gold mining is responsible for 37 percent of global mercury emissions and is the largest source of air and water mercury pollution” (Cochrane B1). 650-1000 metric tons of mercury has infiltrated the environment due to gold mining.
You may think mercury would be evenly distributed in waterways since mercury in low concentrations cannot cause any harm. However, EA Agyapong, MA Besseah, and B Fei-Baffoe conducted a study that showed otherwise. In western Ghana, the goal of the research was to assess whether mining affected the water quality in the surrounding areas. They collected water samples for six months consecutively at ten different sampling sites and found the average amount of mercury per liter of water to be
around .001-.017 mg. The World Health Organization (WHO) established that the Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake of Mercury is 7 micrograms (.017 mg).
This is an alarming problem. Humans drink more than a liter of water every week; in fact, humans should intake three liters of water if they are idle (Elkaim). Theoretically, if one lived near an artisanal mining operation facility, one would intake .357 mg of mercury a week off of groundwater. Even if the amount of mercury per liter were .001m, one would, in theory, intake .021 mg of mercury a week, which is still over the Provisional Tolerable Weekly Intake of Mercury. This may not be a problem for those living in the United States , but for those who live in third world countries.
Solution
Instead of using Mercury, what if they used a chemical called Borax, which is sodium borate (Na2B4O7 * 10H2O)? Sodium borate would be a good substitute for mercury because it is used for cleaning purposes and readily available for artisanal miners to easily procure. Sodium borate lowers the melting point of materials and metals, so smelting the ores would be easier and under normal site-circumstances, artisanal miners would not be able to smelt the ores. If all artisanal miners switched, more than 650-1000 metric tons of mercury would be gone from groundwater and contamination of groundwater would decrease drastically.
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