Mercury Contamination From Historic Gold Mining In California

Exploring the development of California and the relationship between the built environments of the mercury-mining industry and the emerging ethnic identities and communities in California, Mercury and the Making of California brings mercury to its rightful place alongside gold and silver in their defining roles in the development of the American West. In this pioneering study, Andrew Johnston examines the history of California’s mercury-mining industry—and its defining role in the development of the American West. Mercury was crucial to refining gold and silver; therefore, its production and use were vital to creating and securing power and wealth in the west. The first industrialized mining in California, mercury mining had its own particular organization and structure shaped by powers first formed within the Spanish Empire, transformed by British imperial ambitions, and manipulated by groups made wealthy and powerful by controlling it. In addition, the landscapes of work and camp and the relations among the many groups—Mexicans, Chileans, Spanish, British, Irish, Cornish, American, and Chinese—throughout the industry’s history illustrate the complex history of race and ethnicity in the American West. Combining rich documentary sources with a close examination of the existing physical landscape, Andrew Johnston explores both the detail of everyday work and life in the mines and the larger economic and social structures in which mercury mining was enmeshed, revealing the significance of mercury mining to Western history.

Due to its inherent characteristics, mercury contamination from gold mining is a major environmental problem compared to past mercury contamination from industrial point sources. The worsening of social-economical conditions and increasing gold prices in the late 1970s resulted in a new rush for gold by individual entrepreneurs for whom Hg amalgamation is a cheap and easily carried out operation. Even after the present-day mining areas are exhausted, the mercury left behind will remain part of the biochemical cycle of the tropical forest. This book reviews the current information on mercury from gold mining, its cycling in the environment and its long-term ecotoxicological impact. The book is illustrated with numerous diagrams and photographs.

The history of gold mining and industrial development around the waterways of Northern California have made the prominence of mercury contamination an increasing problem in the Sacramento-San Joaquin Delta (the Delta). Scientists strive to understand the relationship between mercury and aquatic environments, between mercury and fish, and between mercury and human health. Meanwhile, fishermen frequent the Delta for both sport and subsistence fishing and are often greeted with advisory signs urging them to limit their locally-caught fish consumption. Advisory signs, however, leave out the more complex historical and political processes that surround mercury's presence in the Delta waters, leaving fishermen with little information outside of the vague threat present on advisory signs. Advisory signs and similar education efforts make assumptions that the best way to mitigate the problem of mercury contamination is through public education, and that fishermen will share an expert-driven understanding of the risks associated with mercury contamination. This thesis addresses the many contexts in which knowledge about mercury is generated, and the many ways its risks are interpreted, framing the case of mercury contamination in four contexts: mercury in the environment, mercury in the body, mercury in the academy, and mercury in the community. Understanding mercury in the environment means placing it in a larger environmental context and understanding both its historic and present day significance. To look at the body means looking at both the toxicology of mercury and how scientists have assessed the risk of its consumption by people. Looking at mercury in the body is in part a reflection on scientific understandings of methylmercury (MeHg), and in part a look at how scientists and researchers impose perceptions of the problem on to affected communities. Academics frequently examine the case of mercury contamination. The methods they have used and recommendations they have made provide a springboard for my own fieldwork and analysis. Finally, I look to communities of fishermen to see how they understand the problem, how they understand their environments, and how they can be involved as the process to curb the problem of mercury contamination lumbers forward.