Mercury Policy Project

New York, NY

The Council of Organizations, a Division of the United Nations Association of the USA, planned a Human Rights Day conference focusing on mercury as a case study from a human rights perspective. MPP’s Director presented “The Global Mercury Crisis Disproportionally Threatens the World’s Most Vulnerable Populations.” Inequities of mercury related illnesses fall disproportionately and most heavily on indigenous and coastal people around the world, especially those who make their living from subsistence fishing - so controlling mercury pollution is a human rights as well as environmental issue. For more information, see MPP’s paper, Seeking Environmental Justice.

A year-long investigation by the Associated Press released recently has linked small scale gold mining by African children with the purchase by Swiss companies, with the gold ending up stored in Swiss banks. Despite a lawsuit filed against the AP by a company in Switzerland–(”Earlier this year, Decafin unsuccessfully sued The AP in Switzerland to prevent its name from being published in this story, claiming it would unfairly damage the company’s reputation“)–the story finally ran. The AP reports that approximately 20% of the gold mined each year is by small scale miners, including children, who are often treated as commodities and subjected to brutal working conditions and life risking activities in pursuit of providing luxury goods to the wealthy. It’s estimated that between 650 and 1,000 metric tons of mercury are used each year by 15 million miners in more than 40 developing countries to extract the gold, exposing miners and pollution the local and global environment. The AP has provided links to 4 video clips that were produced as part of their investigations. It has several scenes of children using mercury to treat the gold. The video clips are posted on the left hand side of this Yahoo page under the title “AP Interactive”, or you can try the direct link. Numerous news outlets covered the story, including ABC News, The Washington Post (includes short slideshow), and USA Today.

A key US House Committee yesterday approved legislation, HR 1534 — the Mercury Export Ban Act of 2007 – banning the export of mercury by 2010 and established a long term storage option at a facility designated by the US Secretary of Energy. HR.1534 is supported by the environmental community, the Environmental Council of States, the American Chemistry Council, the Chlorine Industry and the mining industry and passed the US House Energy and Commerce Committee on a vote of 42 to 2. HR. 1534 is needed to curtail trade in this toxic commodity particularly to developing countries where over 1000 tons of mercury is used and released by small scale gold miners, threatening themselves, their families and communities and the local and global environment to widespread, persistent and bioacccumulative toxin. The legislation moves to the US House of Representatives for consideration.