Several years ago, Luis Fernández saw a storm brewing in Peru’s southeastern Madre de Dios region: rising international gold prices, gold deposits that had washed from the Andes Mountains into the region’s rivers and streams, and a new highway giving small-scale miners access to the area. A tropical ecologist with the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Department of Global Ecology at Stanford University, Fernández had studied the impacts of a similar gold rush in Brazil—deforestation, silting of rivers and mercury pollution. Miners use mercury to extract gold from sediment, then heat the amalgam to vaporize the mercury. At market, shop employees heat gold again to remove remaining mercury before weighing the gold and paying the miners. Initial studies in Madre de Dios showed high mercury levels in some fish and in air near gold shops. This month, Fernández, who has a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, is launching a broader study to measure mercury accumulation in fish and people. He spoke recently with EcoAméricas correspondent Barbara Fraser in Lima. [Log in to read more]

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