[R-G] The Gold Bug: Companies and Workers in a Toxic Industry

[Anthony Fenton]

The Gold Bug
Lia Tarachansky
Companies and Workers in a Toxic Industry

Canadian Dimension magazine, September/October 2008 issue
http://canadiandimension.com/articles/2008/09/04/2022/


Guided by resource discovery and the heavy-handed rule of the free  
market, the mining of gold today is “rush-mining,” much as it was a  
century ago. From the Indigenous lands of Brazil to those in Canada,  
from Tanzania to the Philippines, whenever gold is discovered, local  
communities are forced to migrate or attempt to adjust to the new  
industry. In fact, only eleven per cent of the gold mined worldwide  
has a practical use in technologies like biomedicine or electronics.  
Meanwhile, seventy per cent is used for jewellery, with the rest going  
to investment. Some 35,000 tonnes of gold simply sit in bank vaults  
around the world, while the environment and innumerable communities  
are destroyed for its excavation.

Canada plays a huge role in this global market, being home to the  
largest gold-mining corporations in the world. At the very top reigns  
Barrick Gold, with others like Goldcorp, Gabriel and Pacific Rim close  
behind. Collectively they mine on every continent except Antarctica,  
on which mining is forbidden. But not all gold is excavated by large,  
corporate colonialists, nor is all of it done abroad. One quarter  
comes from artisanal or small-scale mining, and minimal but continuous  
extraction takes place at home (mostly in Ontario and Quebec.)

Countries in Central America and Central Africa have low environmental  
regulations and worker-safety requirements. They are resource-rich,  
and are therefore a lucrative destination for Canadian businesses. At  
home, even though most resource extraction takes place on Indigenous  
lands, we have relatively strict extraction, land-use and  
environmental laws, meaning most companies strive to mine offshore.
Canada: A Major Player

Many Canadian companies have been alleged and shown to participate in  
violations of international law. Amnesty International and CorpWatch,  
among others, have cited Barrick Gold, for example, for gross human- 
rights abuses. In spite of such findings, most corporations continue  
to be supported by such international bodies as the World Bank and the  
International Monetary Fund. The former, for example, has secured  
Barrick with a $56.3-million guarantee on its investment in Tanzania,  
eeven as the company was still involved in legal proceedings in that  
country.

Other Canadian corporations — like Inmet Mining in Papua New Guinea  
and Newmont Mining Corporation of Canada in Ghana, Romania and Peru —  
are allowed to mine with the backing of our government. In Chile this  
has meant ignoring the local peoples’ objections to these companies’  
operations, while they were being financially supported at home by  
Export Development Canada, and publicly backed by Prime Minister  
Stephen Harper.
Small-Scale Mining

In countries like Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Ecuador and Ghana, millions  
of people have taken gold extraction into their own hands. Often in  
direct competition with major corporations, individual miners (called  
“artisanal” miners) sometimes unite with community members into small- 
scale operations. Both artisanal and small-scale mining are important  
for families in the developing world — often their only means of  
survival. Most enter the business because their former source of  
income has been destroyed.

Like large-scale operations, this form of mining has massive effects  
on human and environmental health. Unlike large-scale production,  
however, the artisanal miners and their families inherit the bulk of  
these effects directly, thanks to their use of toxic mercury and  
cyanide in processing the metals. Toxic chemicals like arsenic and  
copper leach into waterways, pollute the air and seep into the soil of  
local communities.

When the two are in competition, large-scale mines often subject the  
small-scale ones to forced relocation, marginalization and sometimes  
even persecution, with the assistance of compliant governments.  
Traders who purchase the refined gold from the artisanal miners also  
often exploit them with artificial monopolies and restriction of  
access to fair prices and alternative incomes.

In some countries, like China, the government has rendered small-scale  
mining illegal and provides exclusive rights to large-scale  
corporations. For millions of people, therefore, this means  
criminalization and loss of income. It also means large-scale  
operations take over and — yet again — pass on the pollution to the  
local population. In most cases, companies also pay incomplete taxes,  
thanks to government subsidies seeking to keep their business. In  
return, companies provide largely symbolic corporate-responsibility  
policies and international-development campaigns.
Problems and Conflicts

Like large industry, small-scale miners are driven by chance  
discoveries of resources, as in one devastating example of a temporary  
1980s gold rush in Brazil, wherein a mass migration of small-scale  
miners invaded indigenous Yanomami land. A bloody conflict was the  
result, leading to the death of twenty per cent of the Yanomami  
population in just a few years. In 1992, the government took control  
and declared the area Yanomami Park in an attempt to restore peace.  
The attempt was short-lived, however, as the land has again recently  
been invaded.

Such conflicts have spawned research and inquiry by NGOs and the  
United Nations. Organizations like the World Bank then use the NGOs’  
reports to advocate for seizing all small-scale mining activities.
A Poisonous Industry

Large-scale operations produce large quantities of toxic waste, which  
often gets buried or dumped into streams. Large-scale mining practices  
also lead to destruction of topsoil, emission of toxic gases,  
degradation of forests and redirection of water, leading to floods and  
droughts. Also alarming is the new industrial trend of “green mining,”  
which uses cyanide instead of mercury for gold processing.

Cyanide, used during the processing and refining stages of industrial  
gold mining, has several identifiable human health effects. Unlike  
mercury, it can enter the body without being actually inhaled or  
ingested. It can be absorbed through the eyes and skin, meaning its  
effects are more invasive. Over a long period of exposure, toxicities  
accumulate. This has been studied and exemplified in such cases as  
that of Ghanaian communities situated adjacent to the Bogoso mine run  
by the American-owned Golden Star Resources.

Where chronic cyanide toxicity develops, it means severe neurological  
and thyroid problems. According to the International Cyanide  
Management Code, “chronic cyanide exposure is linked to demyelination,  
lesions of the optic nerve, ataxia, hypertonia, Leber’s optic atrophy,  
goiters and depressed thyroid function.”
A Toxic Day’s Work

Small-scale miners are also guilty of using cyanide, though the  
quantities are dwarfed by those used in large-scale operations. For a  
mining family, this means a full day’s work in knee-high water,  
resulting in only one to two grams of gold. The extracted ore is then  
processed at home, where it is combined with mercury, burned and  
washed with cyanide. The process releases toxic mercury vapour, and  
exposes the miners and their families to devastating health effects.  
Because of the simple tools and low-process inefficiencies, small- 
scale miners release as much as two grams of mercury into the  
environment for every gram of gold they get.

But compared to the sixty to seventy per cent of the world’s mercury  
pollution that results from large-scale mining, industry and the  
burning of fossil fuels, the levels released by small-scale miners are  
minimal. But the effect it has on the health of the miners is not. Due  
to their direct exposure to mercury and cyanide, and the fact that  
they live in the area they pollute, miners are made to suffer the  
direct costs of their resource extraction.

Once released into the environment, mercury can travel over 2,500  
kilometres in just three days. It pollutes remote areas by dropping  
with rainfall or by binding to soil and water surfaces. Improving the  
safety of this technology is an urgent concern, as mercury — and its  
toxic and organic form, methylmercury — accumulates in human tissues  
and causes health effects like tumours, tremors and embryological and  
developmental delays.
Resisting Gold Mining

Grassroots and global resistance is steadily growing around the globe.  
Communities in Guatemala, the Philippines and Mexico have brought  
active struggles against Canadian and other corporations for years.  
New resistance is also growing against the Vancouver-based Pacific  
Rim, for its gold extraction in El Salvador, as well as in the U.S.  
where seventy per cent of gold mining takes place on Indigenous lands.

In Canada, resource extraction also often takes place on Aboriginal  
lands, and Indigenous, worker and student political resistance to  
corporate mining is on the rise. From Placerdome’s mining in the Yukon  
to Goldcorp’s operations in Red Lake, Ontario, a strong movement  
across communities and tactics is essential. Changes must be achieved  
in governmental policies and procedures, both in their dealings with  
the corporate world and their criminalization of Indigenous and  
grassroots resistance.