Even as information disseminated by high-profile international agencies, including the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP), points to an enhanced focus on eradicating the use of mercury in the global gold recovery industry, local gold miners are reportedly still prepared to defy the widely proven serious health threat linked to the use of the lethal chemical element in pursuit of significantly increasing their earnings from the industry.
Last Sunday’s (September 8th) article on mercury use published in the Stabroek News bared an open official admission by Commissioner of the Guyana Geology and Mines Commission (GGMC) Newell Dennison that the government is rowing against a seemingly unstoppable tide as miners, in their unceasing quest to enhance their gold yield, increasingly embrace a gold-recovery option that could significantly enhance their gold yield but which, over time, could wreak havoc with their health, cut short their life spans and create knock-on deadly environmental pollution.
