Mercury and the Gold Trade
Did you know mercury attracts gold like a magnet?  In the Amazon they are still using this old technique to collect gold and are dumping the hazardous material in the Amazon.

Mercury (quicksilver) is an intriguing mineral.  I have always marveled at it's liquidity, luster and hazards.   After searching the web on the subject of mercury, I found out it is helping to destroy the Amazon with the aid of the lust for gold.

Mercury can be made from a rock called cinnabar.  The Chinese Historical & Cultural Project Curriculum tells how a Spanish soldier named Andr�s Castillero, came to New Almaden,California on a visit one day in 1846. Some people showed him the red rock which was used by the Indians for painting their faces. He knew about the famous quicksilver place of Almad�n, in Spain, where there is the same kind of red rock, so he took some of the red rock and pounded it into tiny pieces. "Then he put these little pieces into one end of a long pipe. He heated that end over a hot fire, and he put the other end of the pipe in a pan of water. The great heat made the quicksilver in the red rock turn into gas. The gas ran through the pipe and into the water. The water cooled the quicksilver gas, and turned it into real quicksilver.

Mercury attracts gold like a magnet.  Miners use mercury to extract gold.  During the California gold rush cinnabar was found and mined to expedite the extraction of gold. In the process of working the mercury smelters many men lost their teeth, received brain damage and even died. 

For every kilo of gold produced, four times that amount of mercury is released into the environment.  Even now with our current technologies we are still using this process and dump mercury in the Amazon.  Please read Greenpeaces article in SITES & REFERENCES.

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This page was last updated on 11/03/97

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