Prospective Analysis of Artisanal Mining in the Santa Rita Village: Municipality of Andes, Antioquia

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) of gold has adversely affected the environment and human health for decades, mostly due to excessive use of mercury. With the enactment of the zero mercury law, miners in Columbia began to replace mercury with cyanide and improve their processes. We analyzed th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inMine water and the environment Vol. 40; no. 3; pp. 783 - 792
Main Authors Sierra florez, Didier Camilo, Gaona, Luz Stella
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.09.2021
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Contamination
Cyanide process
Cyanides
Discharge
Earth and Environmental Science
Earth Sciences
Economic activity
Ecotoxicology
Environmental impact
Forecasting
Geology
Gold
Gold mines & mining
Heavy metals
Hydrogeology
Industrial pollution
Industrial Pollution Prevention
Mercury
Metals
Mineral Resources
Mining
Municipalities
Parameters
Pollutant load
Pollutants
Pollution index
Pollution load
Technical Communication
Time series
Water Quality/Water Pollution
Colombia
Latin America
Socio-environmental conflicts
Artisanal and small-scale mining
Extraction
Subsistence
ARIMA
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Summary:Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) of gold has adversely affected the environment and human health for decades, mostly due to excessive use of mercury. With the enactment of the zero mercury law, miners in Columbia began to replace mercury with cyanide and improve their processes. We analyzed the extraction dynamics, based on what had been identified in the municipality of Andes (Colombia) and indexed the pollutant loads of discharges from different small-scale mining gold plants. Gold production for the year 2022 in the municipality of Andes is predicted to total 9811.4 g. None of the sampled small-scale mines currently complies with the permissible parameters for ions and metals in industrial discharges; however, the contamination levels have been reduced for the: La Y mine by 18%, Dorado mine by 13.3%, El Molino by 8.6%, and La Soledad mine by 2.7%. This shows that the ASM operators in the municipality of Andes are beginning to implement cleaner production strategies.
ISSN:1025-9112
1616-1068
DOI:10.1007/s10230-021-00778-y