Perceptions and realities of mercury contamination in a Peruvian artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) community

Rolando Quispe Aquino, Payne Institute Research Associate Aaron Malone, Faculty Fellow Nicole M. Smith, and Fredy Fortunato García Zúñiga write about how artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is the leading global source of mercury pollution. Efforts to reduce or eliminate mercury use in ASGM have produced limited results, in part because they do not engage the complex socio-technical nature of mercury issues in ASGM. The paper takes a multidisciplinary approach to understand the mercury issue with a socio-technical lens, pairing sampling of mercury in soils with surveys of miners’ and residents’ perceptions of mercury pollution and its dispersion.  August 22, 2022.