Scientists Race to Prove Mercury from Amazon Gold Mining Causes Child Disabilities

Indigenous children in the Amazon are experiencing severe neurological disabilities including inability to raise heads and muscle spasms, with pregnant women and infants showing dangerously elevated mercury levels that threaten current and future generations.

Deep in the Brazilian Amazon, where the Munduruku people have fished the same rivers for generations, a slow and invisible catastrophe is unfolding — mercury from illegal gold mines is accumulating in the bodies of pregnant women and infants at levels three to five times beyond what science deems safe. At least thirty-six children show neurological disorders that genetics alone cannot explain, and researchers at Fiocruz are now conducting the first study designed to prove what many have long suspected: that the price of gold is being paid in the health of Indigenous children. This is a story a

Scientists Race to Prove Mercury from Amazon Gold Mining Causes Child Disabilities

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