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The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has urged small-scale miners to stop applying methods that involve the use of mercury and adopt modern techniques to protect human lives and preserve the environment.
The impression has already been clearly given in the call that mercury hurts both humans and the environment, and that makes the call highly imperative.
It is recorded that the artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector is the largest user of mercury globally, emitting 727 metric tons of mercury annually, which accounts for about 35 percent of global air emissions, and releasing about 800 metric tons of mercury into water bodies.
Coming home to Ghana, it is well known that ASGM activities are known for the use of mercury for the amalgamation of gold.
In the case of illegal gold mining, otherwise known as galamsey, research by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) found that almost all of the mercury used in galamsey is released into land and water bodies.
The findings of this country-specific research include the fact that mercury poisoning due to illegal mining has affected the soil and the quality of drinking water in communities close to river bodies like the Birim, Enu, Pra, Bonsa, and Ankobra, as they have been badly polluted.
Making the call to stop the use of mercury, the EPA emphasized that the chemical in ASGM causes in the affected communities permanent brain damage, seizures, vision and hearing impairments, stillbirth, deformity among babies, delayed childhood development (stunted growth), and kidney malfunction.
Already, there is the use of mercury-added products in the country, such as manometers, batteries, linear and compact fluorescent lamps, skin-lightening soaps and creams, cement, pesticides, biocides, topical antiseptics, dental amalgam, and thermometers.
There is now an ongoing global mercury phase-out, and so the UN is urging member countries to considerably reduce mercury use or eliminate it.
In fact, in some jurisdictions, such as Zimbabwe, mercury use is illegal, and in others, it is restricted in certain ways.
There is now the Minamata Convention on Mercury, a global agreement for reducing mercury pollution.
It recognizes the risks of using mercury in ASGM and calls upon nations to reduce and, where feasible, eliminate it.
The Minamata Convention was agreed upon by more than 120 countries in October 2013 to increase global efforts to significantly reduce and subsequently eliminate mercury releases into the atmosphere, land, and water bodies.
It takes its steam from a mercenary poisoning incident in Japan in 1956, in which more than 2,000 people died; the incident later became known as the Minamata Disease.
Fortunately, there are now alternative ways of undertaking artisanal small-scale gold mining, collectively called mercury-free concentration methods, which the EPA calls tenable.
These are methods used to increase the amount of gold in ore or sediment by selectively removing lighter particles to eliminate or greatly reduce the need for mercury.
They include chemical leaching, panning, sluicing, and spiral concentrators, centrifuges, magnets, flotation, vortex concentrators, and shaking tables.
These techniques are obviously safer for miners, their families, and local communities, and they are helping artisanal and small-scale miners elsewhere achieve high rates of gold recovery.
As the EPA makes the crucial call, the Ghanaian Times expects that the government will kindle the fire of the galamsey fight and also enforce every piece of legislation and convention addressing the elimination of mercury in the relevant sectors of the country’s economy.
