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A new study reveals that West Antarctic glacier retreat reduces carbon sequestration while increasing mercury levels, posing risks to marine life.

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#WestAntarctica #GlacierRetreat #CarbonSequestration #MercuryPollution #MarineLifeRisks
Reenviado desde Science News
(https://t.me/experienciainterdimensional/7521)

まぐろの水銀含有量が下がらない理由

Why Is Mercury Stubbornly High in Tuna? Researchers Might Have an Answer. (New York Times)

最近Environmental Science & Technology Lettersに発表された研究によると、年月をかけて蓄積された深海の有害金属は、魚が餌を求める浅い海に循環していることが分かった。すでに水銀には厳しい規制があるものの、海洋中の水銀濃度の低下が始まるには10から25年かかると専門家は見ている。そのため、まぐろの水銀含有量が減るのはもっとかかる。

日本では水俣病によりその怖さが知られているが、母親が妊娠中に汚染された海産物を食べることにより、少量でも胎児に影響が出る。2013年の水銀に関する水俣条約により、水銀の使用を根絶する方針に世界各国が合意しているものの、途上国の小規模な金採掘ではまだ使用されており、より厳しい規制の必要性も指摘される。

#mercuryPollution #Minamata #Tuna #MatatabiNews

https://www.matatabi.com/b/_V

releasing large amounts of mercury into the #air.

The mercury eventually deposits throughout the #rainforest adding to the unknown quantities of this toxic substance that are dumped or spilled directly into #ecosystems, making “artisanal” and small-scale gold mining the largest source of #MercuryPollution on Earth.

In Latin America, it is estimated that an average of 4.63 grams of mercury are lost for each gram of gold extracted,

5/18

https://chemistry-europe.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/chem.201704840

Earthworks: #Environmental Impacts of #GoldMining

Most consumers don’t know where the gold in their products comes from, or how it is mined. Gold mining is one of the most destructive industries in the world. It can displace communities, contaminate drinking water, hurt workers, and destroy pristine environments. It pollutes water and land with mercury and cyanide, endangering the health of people and ecosystems. Producing gold for one wedding ring alone generates 20 tons of waste.

Poisoned Waters

Gold mining can have devastating effects on nearby water resources. Toxic mine waste contains as many as three dozen dangerous chemicals including:

arsenic
lead
mercury
petroleum byproducts
acids
cyanide

Mining companies around the world routinely dump toxic waste into rivers, lakes, streams and oceans – our research has shown 180 million tonnes of such waste annually. But even if they do not, such toxins often contaminate waterways when infrastructure such as tailings dams, which holds mine waste, fail.

According to the UNEP there have been over 221 major tailings dam failures. These have killed hundreds of people around the world, displaced thousands and contaminated the drinking water of millions.

The resulting contaminated water is called acid mine drainage, a toxic cocktail uniquely destructive to aquatic life. According to one study: “The effects of AMD are so multifarious that community structure collapses rapidly and totally, even though very often no single pollutant on its own would have caused such a severe ecological impact.”

These same “multifarious impacts” also makes recovery from such wastes much more difficult.

This environmental damage ultimately affects us — in addition to drinking water contamination, AMD’s byproducts such as mercury and heavy metals work their way into the food chain and sicken people and animals for generations.
The Biggest Polluters:

The top four mines that dump tailings into bodies of water account for 86% of the 180 million tonnes dumped into bodies of water each year. Those mines are:

Freeport McMoRan and #RioTinto’s Grasberg mine in #WestPapua, #Indonesia, which accounts for approximately 80 million tonnes of tailings
Newmont Sumitomo Mining’s Batu Hijau mine in #Indonesia, which accounts for approximately 40 million tonnes
Ok Tedi Mining Ltd.’s Ok Tedi mine in Papua New Guinea, which accounts for approximately 22 million tonnes
#CliffsMining Company’s Wabush/Scully mine in #LabradorCanada, which accounts for 13 million tonnes of tailings

#WaterIsLife #GoldMine #GoldMining #MercuryPollution #Cyanide

#AmazonForests poisoned by #mercury from #GoldMining

Study finds unprecedented levels of #MercuryPollution

January 28, 2022
by Cheryl Walker

"Wake Forest faculty in the University’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability, and its Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation (CINCIA) are part of an international team of researchers who have discovered that gold mining in the Amazon rainforest is causing exceptionally high levels of mercury pollution in the old-growth rainforest near the mining sites.

"The total mercury concentrations in a forested area in #Peru’s #LosAmigosConservationConcession were the highest ever recorded.

"The study, 'Amazon Forests Capture High Levels of Atmospheric Mercury Pollution From #ArtisanalGoldMining,' appears Jan. 28 in the journal Nature Communications. The research team was led by Jacqueline R. Gerson, as a Ph.D. student at Duke University.

“What this study found was that the wildest forests left on earth are capturing mercury released by artisanal mining, and at superfund-site levels,” said Miles Silman, Andrew Sabin Presidential Chair of Conservation Biology and Director of Wake Forest’s Center for Energy, Environment and Sustainability. 'The wildlife and humans that live within these wild forests are poisoned as well, with effects that we are just beginning to understand.'

"''This study reveals, for the first time, the mechanism of how mercury released into the air by gold mining contaminates #TropicalForests and forest #soils,' Fernandez said. “This atmospheric mercury, which is either deposited on to leaves or absorbed by leaves, eventually falls to the ground and gets incorporated into forest soils.'

"The region of #MadreDeDios is considered a global #biodiversity hotspot, but in recent decades has suffered an unprecedented #GoldRush. mining is doing irreversible damage to one of the world’s largest remaining pieces of #TropicalRainforest and threatening its survival. In the Madre de Dios region of Peru, east of the Andes Mountains, nearly 250,000 acres of rainforest, roughly the size of Dallas, Texas, have been razed and transformed into somewhere that looks like a desert pockmarked by tens of thousands of mercury contaminated mining ponds by illegal #GoldMining.

"Gold miners use toxic mercury to pull flakes of gold out of the river sediment. Then, they separate the gold from the mercury using open fire ovens. The heat melts the gold and turns the mercury to a toxic vapor.

"'People had a lot of ideas about where mercury might be going in these tropical landscapes, and they turned out to be wrong,' Silman said. 'The paper shows that mercury isn’t staying in the mining zone, but rather that trees are scrubbing mercury from the air and transferring it into forest #ecosystems, and into forest wildlife and peoples, where it moves up the food chain with unknown effects.'

"The study also reveals how these contaminated soils serve as a repository for this deposited mercury, preventing. or at least slowing, its transfer into rivers and lakes where it is transformed into a more toxic form of mercury, #Methylmercury, and contaminate aquatic food webs."

https://news.wfu.edu/2022/01/28/amazon-forests-poisoned-by-mercury-from-gold-mining/

#WaterIsLife #GoldMine
#GoldMining #Cyanide

#Quechan Tribe holds Kwanamii Spirit Run to #OroCruz

By Dillon Fuhrman, Karina Bazarte
January 27, 2024

WINTERHAVEN, Calif. (KYMA, KECY) - "The Quechan Tribe held the Kwanamii Spirit Run on Saturday. The event started at 9:00am at the Quechan Community Center, with registration starting at 8:30am.

"According to sources, the run is to protect their sacred lands in regards to the #OroCruzGoldMine, which they say will mine in their land.

"This is our identity. As a #NativeAmerican this is part of us and this is a part of what we are. This is what our ancestors had left us, so this is why we run. We run to be recognized as a whole, to show others this is what our ancestors had left us and this is why we're here: To show the younger generations, 'Hey, we need to be involved.'"- Conan Nierenhausen, member of the #QuechanTribe

https://kyma.com/news/local-news/2024/01/27/quechan-tribe-holds-kwanamii-spirit-run-to-oro-cruz/

#California #EnvironmentalRacism #WaterIsLife #CulturalGenocide #IndigenousNews #NoConsent #GoldMine #GoldMining #MercuryPollution #Cyanide

[video] #Quechan Elder Urges Solidarity in Face of #Mining Efforts

#SMPGold’s #OroCruz Project Threatens #SacredLands, #PrestonArrowWeed Says

by Juan Valencia on October 9, 2023

"IMPERIAL COUNTY — Imagine Jerusalem burning. Imagine Mecca, Bethlehem — any of these cities important to the history and faith of their respective religions — being destroyed, disrespectfully invaded, and irrevocably altered for the sake of exploration, extraction, and #mining.

T"hough these are far-fetched and horrific developments to the imagination, 83-year-old Preston Arrow-Weed — the Quechan tribal elder, cultural bearer, singer of the old songs, as well as author, actor and playwright — today paints a similarly bleak picture regarding the threats being made to his holy place of worship.

"This place is located here in the desert outskirts of #ImperialCounty and in the neighboring #YumaCounty.

"Southern Empire Resources Corp. (SMP Gold) is a company based out of British Columbia, Canada, which for years now has been attempting to mine for gold within these Imperial County areas, specifically the #CargoMuchacho and #IndianPass regions, in a project of mineral exploration for the purposes of extracting gold that they are calling the Oro Cruz Project.

"'We firmly believe that Oro Cruz has exploration potential for more than a million ounces,' states SMP Gold’s project mission on its website. 'We’ll explore the property using modern geological theory and high tech methods of exploration, and see what we can do.'

"For millennia, the Indian Pass area in eastern Imperial County, where SMP Gold plans to drill and disturb the habitat, has held religious and historical significance for the Quechan Tribe. The area contains sleeping circles, #geoglyphs and pottery shards left behind by the tribe’s ancestors, to name some #artifacts."

Video:
https://youtu.be/rOIEx1pmVEI?si=9R6b8QULnuJIZHQW

#California #EnvironmentalRacism #WaterIsLife #CulturalGenocide #IndigenousNews #NoConsent #GoldMine #GoldMining #MercuryPollution #Cyanide

#OroCruz Project

Jan 4, 2024

"The #QuechanTribalCouncil would like to inform the membership on the concern with #SMPGoldCorp. who submitted an Exploration Plan of Operation to the Bureau of Land Management, (BLM) on September 28, 2020. In the Oro Cruz Exploration Project Environmental Assessment/Mitigated Negative Declaration (“EA/MND”), DOI-BLM-CA-D070-2022-0012-EA, Finding of No Significant Impact (“FONSI”), Decision Record and Plan of Operations, Jennifer Whyte, Field Manager for the El Centro Field Office of the Bureau of Land Management (“BLM”) issued the Decision of Record on September 1, 2023.

"The Tribe received the notice of the final decision on August 31, 2023. When a project is introduced, BLM’s process is to notify the #Quechan Cultural Committee to inform them of the of the proposed project and they will conduct their due diligence and correspond with BLM on any concerns and also meet with the Tribal Council on the concerns of any cultural significance with the project and a meeting is set-up with the Tribal Council and BLM to go over those concerns. The Quechan Tribal Council is following the process outlining BLM’s disregard of their own process when approving a project.

"The BLM failed to meaningfully consult with the Tribe as required by BLM and Department of Interior (“#DOI”) policies as well as the National Historic Preservation Act (“#NHPA”). The location of the Oro Cruz Project is part of a cultural, religious, and spiritual landscape that is directly tied to our origin stories, traditions, ceremonies, and cultural patrimony of our people.

"On September 13, 2023, the Imperial County Planning Commission, the lead agency for this Project under the California Environmental Quality Act, held a hearing regarding approval of the EA/MND. The Quechan Tribal Council (President Joaquin, Council Members Mc Gee, Smith, Medart, White and Koteen) as well as members of the tribe raised concerns about the impact of the Project on tribal cultural resources. The Tribal Council members stated the government-to-government consultation was inadequate. The Commission stayed determination of the matter until proper consultation between BLM and the Tribe could occur.

"On September 29, 2023, the Tribal Council submitted a request for review and a stay of the Oro Cruz Exploration Project Environmental Assessment/Mitigated Negative Declaration (“EA/MND”) DOI-BLM-CA-D070-2022-EA, Finding of No Significant Impact (“FONSI”), Decision of Record and a Plan of Operations. The request was submitted to Karen Mouritsen, California State Director, Bureau of Land Management, California State Office.

"On October 25, 2023, the Planning Commission once again held a hearing regarding approval of the EA/MND. Members of the tribe as well as a Council Member (Gloria McGee) were again in attendance to comment on the impact of the Project. The Tribal Council member publicly stated the government-to-government consultation had not taken place and read a letter from President Joaquin into the record requesting they continue consideration of the Project until such consultation could be undertaken, the Planning Commission stayed determination of the matter a second time.

"On November 3, 2023, the Quechan Tribal Council had our first government-to-government consultation concerning the Oro Cruz Exploration project with the Bureau of Land Management. At that meeting, BLM El Centro Field Office Associate Field Manager Carrie Sahagun acknowledged that BLM’s previous meetings with the Tribe’s Cultural Committee did not constitute government-to-government consultation and committed to continuing consultation meetings/discussions with the Tribe. Ms. Sahagun also informed the Tribe that BLM State Director Karen Mouritsen was still considering the request that the Tribe filed on September 29, 2023, for review of the El Centro Field Office’s decision to approve the Project.

"The Tribe received no further updates until November 21, 2023, when Director Mouritsen California State Director, Bureau of Land Management, California State Office sent a letter declining the Tribe’s request for State Director review and stay of the decision to approve the Project. In doing so, Director Mouritsen did not address any of the Tribe’s substantive arguments as to why a stay was necessary but instead summarily concluded that sufficient consultation with the tribe regarding the Project has taken place. The Quechan Tribal Council filed a Notice of Appeal and Petition for Stay with the Interior Board of Land Appeals (“IBLA”) for the Tribe to preserve its appeal rights. This is the final step in the process to stop the project through the Bureau of Land Management.

"On December 13, 2023, Vice-President Hall and Donald Salcedo, Tribal Administrator attended the Planning Committee’s hearing where the Oro Cruz Project was on the agenda yet again. The meeting was also attended by tribal members who commented on their opposition to the project. Vice-President Hall read a letter from President Joaquin and entered it into the record. The Planning Committee stayed determination of the matter for a third time.

"On December 18, 2023, the Tribe filed a Notice of Appeal and Petition for Stay with the Bureau of Land Management in accordance with federal regulations, the appeal will then be transmitted by BLM to the Interior Board of Land Appeals, (“IBLA”).

"The Tribe is currently waiting for the decision of our Notice of Appeal and Petition for Stay from the Interior Board of Land Appeals (“IBLA”). If our Notice of Appeal and Petition for Stay is denied by IBLA, the Tribe will then take legal action and file a suit against the Bureau of Land Management. It is unfortunate that this will occur, but the Tribe holds this issue vital to protect our lands for the past, present and future. We would also engage our membership to submit testimonials of opposition as well by relaying the importance of the land to for protection for our people traditionally, spiritually and for generations to come.

"We will continue to update you when there are significant changes regarding this issue.
Thank you.
Quechan Tribal Council"

https://www.quechantribe.com/article/oro-cruz-project

#California #EnvironmentalRacism #WaterIsLife #CulturalGenocide #IndigenousNews #GoldMine #GoldMining #MercuryPollution #Cyanide #OroCruzGoldMine #NoConsent

#MercuryPollution

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