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Illegal gold mines pollute Peru’s Loreto region
About 80% of people have mercury unsafe levels
Pregnant women and children are most at risk
Lima, June 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – According to a new study by a new study by the Amazonian Scientific Innovation Center at Wake Forest University in the United States, the Loreto region of Amazon, Peru has a “chronic exposure” for mercury to indigenous and river communities.
The results of the test released this month suggest that around 80% of the people tested at the end of last year had mercury levels above the safe border in six communities on the banks of Nanay and Pintuyaku rivers.
“Most of the population is contaminated,” said San Antonio de Nanay’s APU, or leader, Jero Ritegui Devilla, one of the tested communities.
“We ask the authorities to take action on the matter because we are very worried,” he said.
The results showed that 37% of 273 men, women and children were tested, their hair had mercury levels higher than 10 ppm (per million part), while the 2.2 ppm installed by the World Health Organization (WHO) compared to just 3% under the 2.2 ppm ‘safe’ limit.
Gold prices have increased by nearly 50% in the previous year, consistently defeating the record high, and encouraging a rich illegal gold mining trade that is damaging local nature and biodiversity, and increasing significant health concerns.
Illegal miners use mercury to remove gold particles from the river and then burn the poisonous metal, turning to vapor and is absorbed by the surrounding plants, soil and rivers, said Claudia Vega, the leading Para program in Cincia.
Mercury poisoning is associated with many health issues, including cognitive loss in adults and irreversible developmental delays and difficulties for children and infants in the womb.
Gabriel Berria, the regional coordinator of heavy metals for the local health authority, said it was “very regrettable that the villagers were highly contaminated” and blamed the spread of illegal gold mining for mercury levels in the Amazon rivers.
He said that the Health Authority did not have a budget to test for mercury and recently tested 12 villagers on the health journey dependent on blood and urine samples.
Cincia said that tests have shown that the average level was 8.41 ppm, which is more than four times the WHO range.
Given that illegal mining in Loreto is quite recently, there is no comprehensive study on its health impact on the local population yet.
But the levels in these early tests are already more than those in Peru’s Amazon region, which are the most affected by illegal gold mining, Madrey Day Dies, where 2012 tests showed that the average mercury level in most adults was 2.7ppm.
Luis Fernandez, Executive Director of Sinsia at Wake Forest University and Research Professor, said that if illegal mining continues to spread in Loreto, already high mercury level rural mercury can start getting closer to the case with the worst record of mercury contamination.
It includes the famous case in Japan in the 1950s, where children were born with congenital deformity and neurological disability, dumping the mercury in water supply for decades due to a chemical factory.
Vega of Cincia, who led the study, said that the results showed worrying the “background” level of the mercury in the Loreto Repairian communities.
He said that this cannot be completely determined if mercury came from human-generated activities such as sources or illegal gold mining, but it was due to most of the villagers diet due to fish-based diet.
However, “Many studies agreed that the entry of mining into an area greatly increases the mercury level in the environment”, he said.
The newly released study found that people were mainly in contact with methylmerurkari, a highly toxic form that accumulates in the body.
“The biggest risk is for pregnant women and children: methylmerkari can cross the placenta and affect the development of the developing child,” she said. “This type of exposure is a serious public health concern, even if the affected individuals do not show immediate symptoms.” (Editing by Jack Graham and John Heming. Thomson Reuters Foundation Thomson Reuters is a charitable hand.
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