Illegal mining poisoning water, land and food

Ghana’s blessing of rich natural resource endowments, making it one of the world’s largest gold producers, is not with without negative externalities. Motivated by increasing world prices of gold, Ghana is plagued by the extensive practice of illegal small scale mining, often referred to as galamsey. Galamsey not only drains the state of potential revenue but also results in disastrous environmental degradation.

Galamsey, while small scale in its individual operations, is far from small in its prevalence across Ghana. The Minister of Lands and Natural Resources in a previous statement had estimated the value of galamsey occurring in Ghana to be $2.3B in 2016. The environmental costs of this type of mining are certainly evident but are much more difficult to quantify.

Galamsey is not generally associated with industrial machinery and rather uses a very labor intensive extraction method. Riverbeds, a common site for gold mining, are dredged and then chemically treated. Chemical treatments are primarily composed of the hazardous heavy metal mercury. Mercury is used in a process called amalgamation to separate gold from other materials and minerals. Gold becomes bonded to the mercury, and the gold and mercury combination is heated, vaporizing the mercury, ultimately leaving behind the gold.

Contaminated dredge waste is then dumped back in the site, contaminating these area’s water sources, aquatic life, and decreases the fertility of nearby land. Contamination of rivers leads to contamination of the bodies of water they feed into.

Despite its disastrous environmental impacts, contaminating land, water, and air, using mercury is one of the cheapest and most effective means to separate gold.

Mercury, lead, and other heavy metals are also all naturally in the Earth’s crust and the extractive mining processes can surface and spread these metals, leading to further contamination.

Heavy metals can enter the body primarily through the consumption of contaminated water and food, but can also occur by absorption through skin and by inhalation.