While extracting gold, miners add mercury to the soil that contains tiny gold particles. Mercury binds to gold, creating amalgams, which are burned to extract gold. This process releases gaseous ...

Mining often happens in artisanal and small-scale mining operations that burn gold-mercury amalgams to extract gold particles. Credit: Simon Topp. In the Amazon, gold mining is a thriving business, ...

Because the resulting amalgams have a much lower melting point than gold alone, miners then burn the mercury away to collect the residual lucrative metal. Meanwhile, the mercury-laden smoke ...