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 tonnes of mercury annually, which accounts for about 35 per cent of global air emissions, and releases about 800 tonnes 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 out 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 emphasised that the chemical in ASGM causes in the affected communities permanent brain damage, seizures, vision and hearing impairments, still birth, deformity among babies, delayed childhood development (stunted growth) and kidney malfunctioning.
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 and 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 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 mercury 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 makes the EPA call 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, Spiral Concentrators. Centrifuges, Magnets, Flotation, Vortex Concentrators and Shaking Tables.
These techniques are obviously safer for miners, their families and local communities, and are helping artisanal and small-scale miners elsewhere to achieve high rates of gold recovery.
As the EPA makes the crucial call, the Ghanaian Times expects that the government would kindle the fire of the galamsey fight and also enforce every legislation and convention addressing the elimination of mercury in the relevant sectors of the country’s economy.
