The wildcat goldminers doomed by their toxic trade

www.reuters.com
By TIM COCKS and DAVID LEWIS
16-20 minutes

BAWDIE, Ghana – A few years after coming as a teenager to this Ghanaian town to prospect for gold, Yaw Ngoha had made enough cash to marry his sweetheart and build a house with a porch, to which he would later add a flat-screen TV and satellite dish.

So when a town elder invited a doctor to talk to miners about the hazards of wildcat mining, “nobody listened,” said the 36-year-old, sitting on a wooden bench on his porch in a lush banana grove.

“We needed money.”

Since Ngoha started prospecting in the early 2000s, more and more people like him have helped Ghana grow into Africa’s biggest gold producer. Across the continent and beyond, millions have turned to the trade. Few are deterred by the risks.

Ngoha’s friends and family members started to sicken and die, but he told himself this had nothing to do with the amount of dust they’d been breathing in or the toxins – including mercury and nitric acid – they used to extract the gold.

One morning in 2016, Ngoha started coughing up blood. It felt like his airways were collapsing. His doctor treated him for tuberculosis.

World Wildlife Fund sues over Greece oil spill from tanker

By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS ATHENS, Greece — Sep 18, 2017, 3:37 PM ET

The World Wildlife Fund filed a lawsuit Monday over extensive pollution to the coastline outside Athens following the sinking of a tanker near Greece's largest port.

The environmental group's Greek branch filed the lawsuit in the port city of Piraeus against "anyone found responsible," a common practice when a party that could be held legally accountable has not been identified formally.

Greece: Oil from tanker's sinking prompts beach warnings

Updated 5:27 pm, Wednesday, September 13, 2017

San Francisco Gate

ATHENS, Greece (AP) — Greek authorities have appealed to swimmers to stay away from some popular beaches on the coast of Athens after oil spilled from a sunken tanker started to reach the area.
Small slicks were reported at beaches in the suburbs of Glyfada and Piraeus Wednesday. Glyfada Mayor Giorgos Papanikolaou says municipal workers have set up floating booms offshore and used chemicals to try to dissolve the oil.
The small Agia Zoni II tanker sank Sunday while anchored off the coast of Salamina island, just off Greece's main port of Piraeus. It was carrying 2,200 tons of fuel oil and 370 tons of marine gas oil.

Merchant Marine Minister Panagiotis Kouroumplis says divers have sealed the ship's cargo holds and work is due to start on pumping out the remaining fuel.

The World's Resources Aren't Running Out

Ecologists worry that the world's resources come in fixed amounts that will run out, but we have broken through such limits again and again

The Wall Street Journal

How many times have you heard that we humans are "using up" the world's resources, "running out" of oil, "reaching the limits" of the atmosphere's capacity to cope with pollution or "approaching the carrying capacity" of the land's ability to support a greater population? The assumption behind all such statements is that there is a fixed amount of stuff—metals, oil, clean air, land—and that we risk exhausting it through our consumption.

"We are using 50% more resources than the Earth can sustainably produce, and unless we change course, that number will grow fast—by 2030, even two planets will not be enough," says Jim Leape, director general of the World Wide Fund for Nature International (formerly the World Wildlife Fund).

But here's a peculiar feature of human history: We burst through such limits again and again.

Antarctica may have a new type of ice: diamonds

BY ENVIRONMENT CORRESPONDENT ALISTER DOYLE

(Reuters) - A kind of rock that often contains diamonds has been found in Antarctica for the first time, hinting at mineral riches in the vast, icy continent -- where mining is banned.

No diamonds were found, but researchers said they were confident the gems were there.

"It would be very surprising if there weren't diamonds in these kimberlites," Greg Yaxley of the Australian National University in Canberra, who led the research, said in a telephone interview.

Greeks Raid Forests in Search of Wood to Heat Homes

The Wall Street Journal

EGALEO, Greece—While patrolling on a recent cold night, environmentalist Grigoris Gourdomichalis caught a young man illegally chopping down a tree on public land in the mountains above Athens.

Database tallies US emissions

Environment agency launches searchable public log of major greenhouse-gas emitters.

Nature

… a new resource: official data from the companies themselves…

… The inventory covers industrial, commercial and government facilities that emit more than 25,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent per year…

… power plants overshadow any other stationary sources of greenhouse gases, accounting for about three-quarters of emissions…

Jeff Tollefson

17 January 2012