’s billion rush leaves toxins

USINESS dollars at stake and networks laundering ld across borders, y are struggling to blem. “We have ulties,” Ranilson a from Brazil’s g told the Thomson n in Porto Velho, ate capital. with no legal regisgold out of the river from his office. is the department’s ndonia State responng the garimpeiros llar industry. ular (mining) activihigh,” Camara said. r officials are workillegal boats, while g others so they can said.

illegal miners ship tracted from across the United States, 6 study by Verite, a d watchdog. This is al gold exports from nations covered by

nd 2016, 68 tons of extracted from the led out of the region according to the gainst Transnational

ump more than 30 rcury into Amazon poisoning fish and age to people living eters (miles) downstream, according to the Carnegie Amazon Mercury Project, a U.S.-based scientific group.

ATTEMPTS AT REGULATION Gold producers, for their part, say they are unfairly stigmatised as bandits despite many working within the law.

“We are seen as bad by society, but actually we work, pay tax and support the local economy,” said Fabiano Sena Oliveira, a senior member of a gold producers’ cooperative in Rondonia.

Only 20 percent of the miners operate illegally, Oliveira told the Thomson Reuters Foundation from a storefront with barred windows where he buys and sells gold.

Cooperatives of mining boat owners are working to improve their environmental monitoring, and to make sure people register with authorities and pay their taxes, said Oliveira, a huge man wearing a gold chain and Ralph Lauren polo shirt.

“In the past it’s true miners used a lot of mercury,” he said, but today they use far less as it is expensive.

As part of the mining process mercury is mixed with rocks dredged from the bottom of the river. The mixture of mercury and sediment is then heated up, helping to separate the gold.

But visits to garimpeiro boats by the Thomson Reuters Foundation appeared to contradict his remarks about miners moving away from mercury use.

LIFE ON THE BOATS Sidney Magrao has spent the past 35 years as a garimpeiro. He works on a large mining boat with a powerful tube

(Thomson Reuters Foundation/Chris Arsenault\n) r and sediment which had been sucked into the boat as part 2017.

Reuters Foundation/Chris Arsenault\n) (Thomson A worker searches for pieces of gold in a bucket of water on a mining boat in the Madeira River in Rondonia state, Brazil on June 4, 2017.

Reuters Foundation/Chris Arsenault\n) (Thomson A worker examines a nugget of gold on an illegal mining boat on the Madeira River in Brazil’s northwestern Rondonia state on June 4, 2017.