Jack Caravanos on Mercury Amalgamation in the Peruvian Andes
https://youtu.be/7OsDhY-QzMs

Dr. Jack Caravanos, Clinical Professor at NYU’s College of Global Public Health, embarks on a site visit assessing interventions to mitigate the harm of mercury poisoning in the mining villages of Puno and Ollachea, Peru. It’s a three-year study funded by the U.S. State Department and supervised by the non-profit organization Pure Earth (where Jack is Director of Research). In this video, you will see Dr. Caravanos “commuting” across the Ollachea River, workers pre-processing gold containing rocks, and using mercury to extract gold, at great personal risk, to build a better life.

Whether in Ghana, Indonesia, Kenya, or the Amazon, liquid mercury is the most popular and common method for extracting gold particles from soil and rock worldwide. In this mine in Peru, rocks are first sorted for quartz content by a group of about 200 women; then mercury is used to extract gold particles that are embedded in the quartz rocks.
As we all know, mercury is a serious human neurotoxin, and it bio-accumulates in the environment. At $42 per gram, however (the weight of a small paper clip), the economic pressure to forgo personal risk for family sustenance is just too high, so mercury exposures continue.

Jack and Pure Earth are using engineering interventions and educating workers to mitigate this harm; they visit sites and conduct testing to see if solutions are effective and sustainable.