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Submitted via IRC for Runaway1956
The Hidden Cost of Gold: Birth Defects and Brain Damage
CIDAHU, Indonesia — Thousands of children with crippling birth defects. Half a million people poisoned. A toxic chemical found in the food supply. Accusations of a government cover-up and police officers on the take.
This is the legacy of Indonesia's mercury trade, a business intertwined with the lucrative and illegal production of gold.
More than a hundred nations have joined a global campaign to reduce the international trade in mercury, an element so toxic there is "no known safe level of exposure," according to health experts.
But that effort has backfired in Indonesia, where illicit backyard manufacturers have sprung up to supply wildcat miners and replace mercury that was previously imported from abroad. Now, Indonesia produces so much black-market mercury that it has become a major global supplier, surreptitiously shipping thousands of tons to other parts of the world.
Much of the mercury is destined for use in gold mining in Africa and Asia, passing through hubs such as Dubai and Singapore, according to court records — and the trade has deadly consequences.
"It is a public health crisis," said Yuyun Ismawati, a co-founder of an Indonesian environmental group, Nexus3 Foundation, and a recipient of the 2009 Goldman Environmental Prize. She has called for a worldwide ban on using mercury in gold mining.
Mercury can be highly dangerous as it accumulates up the food chain, causing a wide range of disorders, including birth defects, neurological problems and even death.
Today, despite the risks, small-scale miners using mercury operate in about 80 countries in Asia, Africa and the Americas. They produce up to 25 percent of all gold sold.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Monday November 11 2019, @11:18AM (1 child)
I believe that some red tape is necessary. https://www.epa.gov/superfund/superfund-history [epa.gov] Those superfund sites are what happens with zero regulation, and no oversight. The shit was hitting the fan the year I graduated from high school, and it was pretty ugly. Corporations had dumped poisons into the water supplies, on the land, and into the air for generations, literally. That was bad enough, so long as the land was kept for industrial use. Love Canal was a true horror story for any parent, or anyone who hopes to be a parent. The land was contaminated with some pretty nasty stuff, then sold for residential use. Kids started getting sick, and it took awhile for people to trace the cause, then to trace the origin of the poisons.
Even if 80% of companies are responsible enough to keep their backyards clean, the remainder is not. What's a few gallons of oil going to hurt? Or, a few more gallons of PCB's? Or, in the case of mining, what's a hundred gallons of mercury in the course of a year's work?
Maybe the article exaggerates the claims, as GP says. I can accept that, lots of people exaggerate their claims to get more attention. And, maybe there is no exaggeration, either.
What I do know with some certainty, is that rules and regulations were effective in cleaning up the US. When it got too expensive for corporate tastes, they moved operations overseas, where there were no rules. Take a shithole nation, or worse, a genuine hellhole with warlords, rebels, corrupt government, and incursions from outside the nation, and allow any corporation to set up operations. You tell me how much the corporation is going to care about the people who live there, alright?
As much as I hate the idea of a world government, I'm almost willing to concede that we need some kind of authority to chase this kind of crap down. Almost. But, I hate the idea of the UN ruling the world a little bit more than I hate the corporates who exploit everyone and everything they touch.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 12 2019, @02:26AM
Try to keep your facts straight (I live ~20 miles from Love Canal),
> Love Canal was a true horror story for any parent, or anyone who hopes to be a parent. The land was contaminated with some pretty nasty stuff, then sold for residential use.
The story is more complex. Hooker sold it to the Niagara Falls School District, partially under threat of eminent domain that was used to force the sale of nearby property. This was at a time when school enrollment was increasing quickly and there was a need to build more schools. Anyone interested can start here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_Canal#Hooker_Chemical_Company [wikipedia.org] and read the next section as well.
No question the dump contained nasty stuff but it was fairly well buried for the time. Then the school district disturbed the clay cap and other containment when building the school...