Whitepaper - Addressing environmental and health problems caused by mercury in artisanal gold mining

The largest source of anthropogenic mercury emissions is artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM). Huge amount of metal mercury is used for gold extraction by amalgamation. ASGM caused about 33,8% of global emissions and 71% of Latin America emissions of mercury in 2015 according to the draft version of Chapter 2 in the Technical Background Report to the Global Mercury Assessment 2018.