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By Anonymous

The Artisanal Gold Council is a registered non-profit organization that creates sustainable development in artisanal and small scale gold mining communities.

For more information please visit our website: http://www.artisanalgold.org

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The Artisanal Gold Council is a registered non-profit organization that improves the environmental and economic sustainability of artisanal and small scale gold mining communities.

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Is Borax the Miracle Chemical that Will Replace Mercury in Artisanal Gold Mining?

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The Myth of a Miracle Cure Can borax replace mercury in artisanal gold mining? – or is it better concentration that can replace mercury? Does Borax really have anything to do with it? Is Borax a Miracle Chemical? Those promoting borax as a replacement for mercury in small scale gold mining are overselling it and risk giving the impression that there is a miracle cure. They may be well intentioned but they are misleading the world by claiming that borax is a direct replacement for mercury. This is simply not true. The bar of gold shown here was entirely produced using borax. It was also entirely produced using mercury. How can that be if the word going around is that borax is a replacement for mercury? It is not. Borax is used in every Artisanal and Small Scale Mining gold shop in the world and has been for a hundred years. It has been used in pottery glazes for centuries for the same reason. It is a flux. Background: if a miner has 10 kilograms of sand that contai...
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ASGM and Public Health

By Anonymous
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The AGC helps miners improve their productivity and helps them to comply with minimal health, safety and environmental standards; this can facilitate the formalisation of their livelihoods, allowing them to increase their income in a safer way for both them and their communities. One of the ways in which the AGC does this is through educating health workers and miners on the risks of certain aspects of ASGM and providing ways to mitigate these risks, while at the same time as training miners on how to process their gold in a safer way, largely by using less or no mercury.   For the vast majority of the millions of people who work in ASGM worldwide, labor conditions are substandard. There are multiple health risk factors that affect these populations; for example, acute accidents and injuries are common and chronic conditions resulting from exposure to toxins are prevalent, although rarely quantified. Moreover, ASGM communities typically have little to no access to education, ...
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Concentration of Gold Ores - a Key to Reducing Mercury Use in Artisanal and Small Scale Gold Mining

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In artisanal gold mining, mercury is essentially used to concentrate the gold. It does this by bonding with the gold to form a heavy amalgam that is then easily separated from the other minerals. It follows therefore, that if mercury is used as a mechanism of concentration, producing concentrates of gold ores through other means can enable reduction or even elimination of mercury use. In other words, a good process of concentration can replace mercury and lead to big environmental and health improvements. Concentrating gold ores before applying mercury greatly reduces the mass of material that comes into contact with mercury. This reduces the amount of material that becomes contaminated and also the amount of mercury that is required to be applied. And of course, if concentration is done with sufficient sophistication and knowledge, mercury is not needed at all. As an important first step along the way to eliminating mercury, concentrating avoids a wor...
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