“Small-scale miners adopt less toxic methods”, 4 July 2014

Environmental group Ban Toxics (BT) has enabled small-scale miners in a town in Kalinga to adopt a less toxic method of extracting gold from the ore without having to use mercury, a toxic chemical that is harmful both to humans and the environment…BT said that following a three-year intervention program, it helped 95 percent of small-scale gold miners in the town of Ga’ang, Kalinga Province to use mercury-free methods…BT also assisted the...[community] in amending their rules that now explicitly ban the use of mercury in Ga’ang. For its part, the Kalinga provincial government also passed a resolution in 2013 that prohibits the use of mercury in all mining activities…Despite the risk to health and the environment, small-scale miners all over the country have used mercury indiscriminately without precautionary measures to protect themselves and their communities…