Study raises alarms for mercury contamination in six indigenous communities

The research was sponsored by the Central of Indigenous Peoples of La Paz (CPILAP) and had the services of the state-owned Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA) in the final analysis of the hair samples taken from 302 people from the Esse Ejjas, T’simanes, Tacanas, Mosetenes, Lecos and Uchupiamonas ethnic groups who live in the north of the department of La Paz, one of the main areas of Bolivia where gold is exploited in the Amazon rivers.

“We have done the study on people and on fish in the water and it has shown us very alarming levels of contamination. It is urgent to take sanitary measures to help control these effects,” CPILAP leader Gonzalo Oliver, from the Tacana town, told France 24.

The results indicate that up to 74.5% of people tested have mercury above what is acceptable with a mean of 3.93 parts per million (ppm) when what is permissible in the body, according to international health organizations, is 1 ppm.

The highest records are in the Esse Ejjas with 6.9 ppm and the T’simanes, with 6.8 ppm. Paradoxically, these ethnic groups live on the banks of rivers in an area far from illegal mining operations, but their population is contaminated with mercury due to their high consumption of fish and drinking water from rivers where miners discard the substance used to extract gold.

“We have had reports in the Esse Ejjas children of very strange behaviors such as sudden sleepiness, learning difficulties, parameters that tell us that something is wrong,” Oliver said, adding that there are also reports of pregnancy difficulties and even of losses of unborn babies that may be related to contamination.

The indigenous leader called for the urgent formation of a medical brigade from international health organizations to help this vulnerable population mitigate the effects of contamination, demanded that the Government prohibit the use of mercury and “fight against illegal and destructive mining,” which They create hundreds of mining cooperatives in the area where the affected ethnic groups are.

The situation of the Esse Ejjas fishermen on the Beni river was warned in 2022 by the Ombudsman’s Office, which warned in a report about their “abandonment and self-marginalization” with the danger that “mercury and methylmercury poisoning” could “cause risk of extinction”.

In addition, in 2021, according to the Ombudsman, a study by the International Pollutant Elimination Network (IPEN) carried out in four countries established that the Esse Ejjas women had a mercury level of 7.58 ppm, well above the results obtained in the women examined in Amazonian communities of Brazil, Venezuela and Colombia.

“We are losing generations of indigenous peoples”

The biologist Darío Achá, head of the UMSA Environmental Quality Laboratory and a researcher on the mercury problem in Bolivia with institutions from France and Canada, stressed that contamination by this substance in the Amazon “was already worrisome 20 years ago and now it seems got worse.”

He indicated that “pregnant mothers transmit mercury to their babies and this generates development problems, mainly in the nervous system” and that chronic exposure, as occurs among the Amazonian peoples, manifests itself in “intellectual capacity being lost due to the effect of mercury”, both in children and adults.

“It’s a really dramatic problem. We are losing generations of indigenous peoples, who are going to be intellectually affected by mercury”, she told France 24 to underline that this is an “injustice” against a vulnerable population.

One way to mitigate the damage, according to the researcher, would be to change the diet in these fishing villages, offering them the consumption of other types of protein and meat, since the indigenous people of the Amazon have fish as their main source of nutrition.

The expert called attention to other investigations carried out among miners in the Amazon who handle mercury, but who have low levels of contamination, which is explained because they mainly consumed other types of meat and ate fish infrequently.

The problem, according to Achá, is complex because there are many people dedicated to mining in the Amazon, there is a high production of mercury in the world and also a high demand for goldespecially from the countries that keep it in their vaults as an economic reserve.

Bolivia, the largest importer of mercury, seeks to regulate with a decree

Bolivia is a signatory to the Minamata Convention on Mercury, but institutions such as the Ombudsman’s Office and the UN Rapporteurship on Toxic Substances and Human Rights, have questioned that the Government cannot prevent the circulation of the toxic metal and, on the contrary, the country has become a buyer of global importance.

According to statistics from the Bolivian Institute of Foreign Trade (IBCE), between 2018 and 2021 Bolivia was the second largest importer of mercury in the world behind India, but in 2022 it led the statistics by buying 94 tons with a value of five million Dollars.

In contrast, in 2022, Argentina spent 1.2 million dollars on mercury imports; Brazil, $690,000; Colombia, $303,000 and Peru, $40,000, among the relevant figures for the South American region, according to data provided by that institution.

Bolivia has become, according to the opinion of experts on the subject, a kind of “regional importer”, from whose territory the metal is illegally trafficked to other neighboring countries where the trade in mercury is prohibited, but it continues to be used in mining. alluvial.

In the last hours, the Government of Luis Arce has issued a decree that creates the Single Registry of Mercury (RUME) and establishes the obligation of a “prior authorization for the import or export of mercury”, with the purpose of “protecting the health human”.

The leaders of the mining cooperatives have rejected the regulation and announced mobilizations against the Government, considering that the regulation will have a speculative effect on prices.

With the support of the United Nations Organization for Industrial Development (UNIDO), Bolivia has two projects to advance compliance with the Minamata Convention.

The UNIDO coordinator in Bolivia, Diego Álvarez, reported that the PlanetGold Bolivia project, which seeks to reduce mercury emissions and releases, has identified, together with representatives of mining cooperatives, pilot operations where “assistance can be carried out technique with the implementation and/or adaptation of technologies without the use of mercury”.

ANDThe execution of the project is expected to take place from next July.

In parallel, according to UNIDO, they are also working with the MEDMIN Foundation to have information on the mining districts that use the most mercury, in what type of mining it is used and if its operations are mechanized or semi-mechanized.

These are steps to outline the policies and guidelines of the National Action Plan for the reduction of the use of mercury, which are also urgently demanded by indigenous people, ecologists and research centers due to the need to regulate its trade in the Amazon.