A United Nations letter to Colombia warns that mercury contamination from illegal gold mining in the Atrato River basin is ...

KEDOUGOU, Senegal (AP) — The quickest way to separate gold from rock, Sadio Camara says, is with a drop of mercury. She empties a dime-sized packet of the silvery liquid into a plastic bucket of muddy ...

Small-scale gold mining in the area releases mercury into the environment, where it can make its way into fish and, in turn, ...

Since the modern gold rushes of the 1970s and 1980s, gold has been one of Australia's major exports. Australia is the ...

A drill echoes through narrow tunnels deep within the mountain where miner Hugo Flores bores into rock in search of one of Earth’s most toxic elements. Buried in red stripes of minerals illuminated by ...

The soaring price of gold is fueling a "mercury boom" in central Mexico. A surge in the demand for the toxic metal, which is key in illegal gold mining, is benefiting Mexican miners but also exposing ...

An interdisciplinary team of experts in green chemistry, engineering and physics at Flinders University in Australia has developed a safer and more sustainable approach to extract and recover gold ...

BOGOTA, Colombia — Peruvian customs officials have seized a record-breaking shipment of illegal mercury, exposing a cross-border smuggling network that is fueling one of the Amazon’s most destructive ...

A Catholic bishop in Peru’s Amazon is warning that mercury from illegal gold mining is contaminating rivers, fish and people ...

The alchemist's dream is to make gold from common metals, but can this be done? The physics needed to explain how to change one element into another is well understood and has been used for decades in ...