Peruvian Gold Comes with Mercury Health Risks
Monday, April 11, 2011 - 11:01
in Mathematics & Economics
PUERTO MALDONADO, Peru -- On a busy, dusty street beside a huge open-air market, signs reading “oro” mark shops that trade in gold. The customers, mostly men in work clothes and rubber boots, have just arrived from the mining camps to sell their gold and wire money home.Inside, shopkeepers heat the miners’ clumps of gold ore, releasing mercury vapors that waft into the shop, and then outside, into the streets crowded with townspeople. [More]
