Mercury Contamination In Prey Meas Goldmine 2007
In the last four years, the numbers of artisanal miners working around Prey Meas, Ratanakirri, Cambodia has increased tenfold. All miners appeared to use mercury for the first extraction of gold. Some miners used a second extraction with cyanide. Other miners used a high concentration of mercury for a second extraction that extracts more than 97% the gold. In spite of an efficient method, the high concentration of mercury used (275,000 ng/g) resulted in considerable amounts of mercury in the tailings (8200 ng/g).
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- A mine shaft
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- Collapsed mine shaft
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- Shells collected at Lumphat
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- A small retort