A recent study’s findings show widespread mercury contamination of women of reproductive age (18-44 years) along the Amazon due to mining. For 58.8% of the women, mercury levels were above the limit of 1 ppm (part per million) established by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA) for negative effects on fetuses. “The study – published in June 2021 by the International Pollutants Elimination Network (IPEN) and Biodiversity Research Institute (BRI), with the support of the Instituto de Pesquisa e Formação Indígena (Iepé), which released the research in Brazil in December last year – collected hair samples from 34 Brazilian women and from another 129 in Bolivia, Venezuela and Colombia.”
“Bolivian women had the most worrying levels of contamination, with 7.58 ppm. They are indigenous people who are part of the Eyiyo Quibo and Portachuelo peoples and do not have contact with mining or benefit from the exploitation of gold, but feed on fish from the Beni River. The report that resulted from the study describes that the area suffers from pollution of fauna and water resources, due to the operation of dredgers – large machinery used for dredging gold – itinerant in the region.”