Health Risks of Gold Miners

Health problems are documented for gold miners who worked mainly underground with little exposure to elemental mercury in Australia, North America, South America, Europe, and Africa. Major problems examined included life expectancy, cancer frequency, and pleural diseases. Health problems of miners who worked mainly on the surface and with extensive exposure to elemental mercury owing to its use in amalgamating and extracting gold, are reported in Australia, the Philippines, Brazil, and Venezuela; emphasis is on mercury residues in tissues, air, and diet and their significance when compared with existing mercury criteria for human health protection (Eisler 2000b, 2003). Health risks to gold miners from the use of cyanide in heap leaching and vat leaching gold recovery techniques were comparatively low, unlike effects on wildlife and the landscape (Eisler et al. 1999; Eisler 2000a), which are discussed in Chapter 11.