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Ellen Silbergeld, PhD, Bloomberg School of Public Health, Johns Hopkins University, Room 6010, 615 N. Wolfe Street, Baltimore, MD 21205, (410) 502-5775, esilberg@jhsph.edu
Artisanal or small scale mining (ASM) is a widespread extractive activity, with multiple impacts that affect directly both human health and ecosystem integrity, thus exemplifying the complex interactions between ecology and public health. Artisanal goldmining is particularly damaging because of its specific use of destructive technologies (hydraulic mining) and toxic materials (most often elemental mercury) to extract and separate gold from placer deposits often found in aquatic systems. Deforestation precedes exploitation and then hydraulic mining destroys the integrity of rivers and streams, reducing fast flowing rivers to a series of static impoundments. The use of mercury not only causes immediate exposures of miners to inorganic Hg but also more dispersed and persistent exposures of wider populations through contamination of fish by methyl mercury. In addition, artisanal goldming often induces major socio-environmental change, in the movement of populations and long-distance migrations into areas that are environmentally fragile and ill-equipped to handle the health and other needs of increased human settlements. In settings such as the Amazon basin, parts of the Andean altiplano, the Philippines, Papua New Guinea, and elsewhere, all of these events interact in contributing to increased transmission of vector borne diseases. The ecological changes favor expansion of vector habitats; the immigration of nonimmune hosts favors ready transmission, and the toxicity of mercury specifically targets host resistance to diseases like leishmaniasis, Chagas disease, and malaria. Thus artisanal goldmining serves as an important example of the multiple interactions between ecological change and human health. The social and ecological impacts of artisanal mining have been generally underestimated because sites are often widely dispersed, with relatively few miners in any specific site. Nevertheless, these activities collectively can have significant effects on economy, society and environment at a regional scale. Studies conducted in Brazil have suggested that regional gold mining contributes to the reemergence of malaria as a major public health problem for regions of Brazil as far away as Sao Paulo state. The releases of mercury from goldmining eventually contribute to global mercury levels, moving through atmospheric fluxes and deposition to distant regions of the planet. Research supported by: PAHO, NIH-Fogarty, CNPq (Brazil), Heinz and W Alton Jones Foundations.
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Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.