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La Rinconada is a town that clings to the side of a mountain in
southeastern Peru. At 5100 m it is famous for being the highest
settlement in the world, but it is also becoming increasingly
well known for being one of the most dangerous places to live.
Estimates of the population vary between 30,000 and 50,000
inhabitants, all of whom are there because of gold - people have
been mining gold in the mountains since the Incas (Wade 2013,
Finnegan 2015). Despite the large population there is no sewage
system, no organized waste management, no running water and
no paved roads (Arana 2012). The people are desperately poor
despite the area yielding more than $400 million worth of gold
a year (Arana 2012). La Rinconada is not a company town built
to service an international mining operation, instread it supports
informal unregulated mining that relies on mercury to process
the gold. The miners dig ore from the mountains and then grind
it, addingmercury to forma gold –mercury amalgam. They dump
the contaminated waste water and sediment. The amalgam is
then taken to one of the more than 250 gold shops in the town,
where it is heated to release the gold. The process is inefficient,
sending mercury vapour into the atmosphere, which aided by
the cold eventually precipitates adding to the load of mercury
entering waterways (Fraser 2011). A study of the air quality in and
around La Rinconada’s gold shops, suggested that they could be
emitting as much as 20 metric tons of mercury per year (Wade
2013). Information on the impact of mercury exposure to the
community is lacking, but there is ample evidence from other
artisanal mining communities that these high levels of mercury
will be causing widespread irreparable health problems to both
children and adults, including neurological, kidney and possibly
immunotoxic/autoimmune effects (Gibb and O’Leary 2014).
CASE STUDY
The highest inhabited village in the world is a mining village
Miners heading up to the La Rinconada tunnels in the high
mountains tramp on polluted slush flowing from the mines
and pass mounds of rubbish.
Photo
©
Gina Nemirofsky