An estimation of the artisanal small-scale production of gold in the world

Seccatore, Jacopo; Veiga, Marcello M.; Origliasso, Chiara; Marin, Tatiane; Tomi, Giorgio de

doi:10.1016/j.scitotenv.2014.05.003

Cited by 212 publications

(125 citation statements)

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“…This activity has played and currently plays an important economic role in the country, attracting a large number of miners (Veiga, 1997a,b) with an estimated Au production of 21 t/ a (Seccatore et al, 2014). Even though the artisanal Au mining, locally called garimpagem, has long roots in the history of this territory since the 1950s (Cremers et al, 2013), the sector truly began to grow as a viable livelihood alternative in the 1970s (UNDP, 2011;Cremers et al, 2013) and in the early 1980s when the Au price reached US$ 850/oz (Mylchreest, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gold losses and mercury recovery in artisanal gold mining on the Madeira River, Brazil

Balzino

Seccatore

Marin

et al. 2015

Journal of Cleaner Production

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Gold losses and mercury recovery in artisanal gold mining on the Madeira River, Brazil

Balzino

Seccatore

Marin

et al. 2015

Journal of Cleaner Production

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“…The increase in the gold price over the past 10 years has stimulated small-scale gold mining in Africa, Asia, and South America, resulting in an annual production of around 400 tonnes of gold by roughly 16 million miners [1]. Despite the contribution of approximately 12% of total global gold production [2], artisanal gold mining is known to have many negative environmental impacts [3], and most of these activities are illegal [4].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Specifically, this study provides the following: (1) an evaluation of the effects of sediment loading on the underwater light environment of impacted and non-impacted rivers; and (2) evaluation of the relationship between light attenuation caused by water siltation and the critical depth for phytoplankton communities. To address these objectives, biogeochemical and in situ optical measurements, including Inherent Optical Properties (IOPs) and Apparent Optical Properties (AOPs), were collected during two field campaigns addressing high and low water conditions.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of Small-Scale Gold Mining Tailings on the Underwater Light Field in the Tapajós River Basin, Brazilian Amazon

et al. 2017

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Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining (ASGM) within the Amazon region has created several environmental impacts, such as mercury contamination and changes in water quality due to increased siltation. This paper describes the effects of water siltation on the underwater light environment of rivers under different levels of gold mining activities in the Tapajós River Basin. Furthermore, it investigates possible impacts on the phytoplankton community. Two field campaigns were conducted in the Tapajós River Basin, during high water level and during low water level seasons, to measure Inherent and Apparent Optical Properties (IOPs, AOPs), including scattering (b) and absorption (a) coefficients and biogeochemical data (sediment content, pigments, and phytoplankton quantification). The biogeochemical data was separated into five classes according to the concentration of total suspended solids (TSS) ranging from 1.8 mg·L −1 to 113.6 mg·L −1 . The in-water light environment varied among those classes due to a wide range of concentrations of inorganic TSS originated from different levels of mining activities. For tributaries with low or no influence of mining tailings (TSS up to 6.8 mg·L −1 ), waters are relatively more absorbent with b:a ratio of 0.8 at 440 nm and b 660 magnitude of 2.1 m −1 . With increased TSS loadings from mining operations (TSS over 100 mg·L −1 ), the scattering process prevails over absorption (b:a ratio of 10.0 at 440 nm), and b 660 increases to 20.8 m −1 . Non-impacted tributaries presented a critical depth for phytoplankton productivity of up to 6.0 m with available light evenly distributed throughout the spectra. Whereas for greatly impacted waters, attenuation of light was faster, reducing the critical depth to about 1.7 m, with most of the available light comprising of red wavelengths. Overall, a dominance of diatoms was observed for the upstream rivers, whereas cyanobacteria prevailed in the low section of the Tapajós River. The results suggest that the spatial and temporal distribution of phytoplankton in the Tapajós River Basin is not only a function of light availability, but rather depends on the interplay of factors, including flood pulse, water velocity, nutrient availability, and seasonal variation of incoming irradiance. Ongoing research indicates that the effects of mining tailings on the aquatic environment, described here, are occurring in several rivers within the Amazon River Basin.

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“…This mining technique is defined as informal mining that may be legal or illegal, and which uses basic methods to extract gold from ore [1]. Worldwide, approximately 16 million gold miners produce between 380 and 450 t of metal each year from at least 70 countries [2]. The informal nature of mining leaves miners exposed to exploitation; and while ASGM is not necessarily a criminal activity, mining in Latin America (for example) has in alternative livelihood during the dry season, increased participation in schooling, increased purchasing power of communities, reduced conflict within communities and reduced temptation for people to migrate overseas for work [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Phytomining for Artisanal Gold Mine Tailings Management

et al. 2016

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Abstract:Mine tailings are generally disposed of by artisanal and small scale gold miners in poorly constructed containment areas and this leads to environmental risk. Gold phytomining could be a possible option for tailings management at artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) locations where plants accumulate residual gold in their above ground biomass. The value of metal recovered from plants could offset some of the costs of environmental management. Getting gold into plants has been repeatedly demonstrated by many research groups; however, a simple working technology to get gold out of plants is less well described. A field experiment to assess the relevance of the technology to artisanal miners was conducted in Central Lombok, Indonesia between April and June 2015. Tobacco was planted in cyanidation tailings (1 mg/kg gold) and grown for 2.5 months before the entire plot area was irrigated with NaCN to induce metal uptake. Biomass was then harvested (100 kg), air dried, and ashed by miners in equipment currently used to ash activated carbon at the end of a cyanide leach circuit. Borax and silver as a collector metal were added to the tobacco ash and smelted at high temperature to extract metals from the ash. The mass of the final bullion (39 g) was greater than the mass of silver used as a collector (31 g), indicating recovery of metals from the biomass through the smelt process. The gold yield of this trial was low (1.2 mg/kg dry weight biomass concentration), indicating that considerable work must still be done to optimise valuable metal recovery by plants at the field scale. However, the described method to process the biomass was technically feasible, and represents a valid technique that artisanal and small-scale gold miners are willing to adopt if the economic case is good.

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An estimation of the artisanal small-scale production of gold in the world

Cited by 212 publications

References 10 publications

Gold losses and mercury recovery in artisanal gold mining on the Madeira River, Brazil

Gold losses and mercury recovery in artisanal gold mining on the Madeira River, Brazil

Effects of Small-Scale Gold Mining Tailings on the Underwater Light Field in the Tapajós River Basin, Brazilian Amazon

Phytomining for Artisanal Gold Mine Tailings Management

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