Claudia Vega

Since I was little, I always loved nature.

I always loved the feeling of being in a forest.

For me, the forest is more valuable than gold.

My name is Claudia Vega, and I work in the Peruvian Amazon.

I'm studying mercury contamination due to artisanal gold mining in Madre de Dios.

I think people are not aware that sometimes the gold that you buy maybe is poisoning the rainforest in the Amazon or other tropical areas.

About 20% of the gold producers in the world come from artisanal gold mining.

It's not that small.

And when you say artisanal, it's not because it's natural.

It's called artisanal because they don't use fancy equipment.

They have a very, like, rustic way.

People have been doing that since the gold rush in California.

They were using mercury.

So the technique hasn't advanced that much since then.

Mercury is used because it's an easy way to extract the gold.

So what the miners do is the gold is like a sandy, in a sandy form, and it's usually in the sediment of the rivers.

They put mercury.

The mercury binds with gold.

Then they have the amalgam, which is a mix of gold and mercury, and then they burn the amalgam, and then the mercury just evaporates to the air, and they got the gold.

When they're doing the mixing with gold, some of the mercury goes into the river.