These Chilean Centers are directly responsible for the annual discharge of 1.9 million tonnes of toxic tailings wastes containing an estimated 222 kilograms (“kg”) of mercury, 2,000 tonnes of cyanide, methylmercury, and toxic mercury cyanide complexes directly into the Calera and Amarillo rivers polluting the rivers, contaminating the soil, and causing local and global biodiversity destruction.

These centers are also responsible for the release of 303 kg of mercury to the atmosphere from the ASG miners burning their mercury-gold amalgams annually.

Zaruma, one of Ecuador’s 5 UNESCO World Heritage Sites and at 1,300 meters high up the Amazon Andes, is the planet’s largest anthropogenic source of deadly global atmospheric mercury pollution.

4 – 6 artisanal miners spend 3 – 4 weeks mining 40 – 80 tonnes of ore.
48 – 72 hours of non-stop processing producing 300kg of concentrate which is then reduced to 10 – 15kg.

At the most they recover is 20 – 30% of the ore gold with the remaining gold lost to tailings wastes which the processing center owners keep, if they have storage ponds for the tailings wastes, as payment from the artisanal miner for use of the center.

The owners subsequently remediate these tailings wastes using cyanide salts which recovers 2 – 3 times more gold than the artisanal miner recovered using mercury.