Researchers found that in one area of the forest, mercury levels rivaled those measured in industrial areas where mercury is mined.
The miners use mercury, which binds to gold, to separate the precious stone from river sediments, according to the international team of researchers. The mercury is then burned off in an open fire oven, and its smoke falls onto nearby leaves and washes into the forest soil by rainfall.
"We found that mature Amazonian forests near gold mining are capturing huge volumes of atmospheric mercury, more than any other ecosystem previously studied in the entire world," said Jacqueline Gerson, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of California, Berkeley said in aWhile the high concentrations of mercury have negative implications for the local environment — the research team worries that the mercury levels could reduce bird reproduction by 30% after finding that they...
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