Researchers wanted to make information and tests on mercury contamination available to women who live and work in Vila Nova, a mining site in the state of Amapá. On the first day, part of the testing was done. In the second, threats came.
The collection team, made up only of women, managed to collect around 20 hair strands from residents. They then went to spend the night in Pedra Branca do Amapari, before returning to the village and continuing their work.
The next morning, an attendant at a gas station in town warned that there would be a message on the road for them. Near the access to the community, there was an abandoned pickup truck on fire.
“They got the message,” says Decio Yokota, information management coordinator at Iepé (Institute for Research and Indigenous Training), one of the entities that supported the project. “They understood they weren’t supposed to come back.”
The research was developed by Ipen (International Pollutant Elimination Network) and by Bri (Biodiversity Research Institute).
According to Yokota, they had already been approached by male gold miners, possibly those who ran illegal miners in the area, who questioned them about what they were doing. The case took place at the end of 2019, and the last stage of the idea, which would be to show the results to the women tested, has not yet been completed due to the pandemic. The results were released this year.
The representative of Iepé affirms that the 34 women in the mines —which, according to him, included the wives of garimpeiros, de facto prospectors and women who survive from prostitution in the area— analyzed in the survey showed interest in testing themselves.
With the samples collected and with some more obtained in the surroundings of the village, it was possible to detect mercury contamination, both among the women of the mines and among others who do not work directly in the activity.
According to him, the contamination that occurs directly in the mine, by handling mercury to separate the gold, is acute, violent and extremely dangerous. “But if the person leaves the mine, the mercury leaves the body”, he says.
Another serious problem is contamination by methylmercury (100 times more toxic than mercury in metal) through ingestion of contaminated fish.
The WHO (World Health Organization) points out that fish consumption is, in general, the main form of human exposure to mercury (methylmercury actually).
All women in the region of Vila Nova who participated in the survey ate fish at least once a week. The greater the consumption of the animal, the greater the levels of mercury found.
Mercury contamination can affect the brain, kidneys and liver, according to the Mercury Observatory, a platform created by WWF-Brasil, Fiocruz, and Cincia (Centro de Innovación Científica Amazónica), in addition to other institutions. Contamination can also affect fetuses.
The risk to pregnant women and their children, even led the study by Iepé to focus on women of childbearing age, from 18 to 44 years old, according to the research methodology.
A study published last year in the Journal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, with data collected in previous years in the Peruvian Amazon, for example, indicates higher levels of mercury contamination in communities classified as indigenous or native, regardless of their proximity to mining activity.
In addition to this study, several others have already shown contamination by methylmercury in Brazilian indigenous communities. Again, the role of mining in the environmental contamination that affects fish —an essential food for several communities of Indians and riverside dwellers— is pointed out as responsible for the problem.
Surveys from 2016, 2019 and 2020 by Isa (Socioenvironmental Institute), Sergio Arouca National School of Public Health (Ensp/Fiocruz), and Fiocruz and WWF-Brasil have already detected mercury contamination in the Yanomami and Munduruku peoples.
At the end of 2021, Funai (National Indian Foundation) prohibited Fiocruz from carrying out a study on mercury contamination and the impact of illegal mining inside Yanomami land. The justification was the ordinance 419, of March 17, 2020, which concerns the prevention of contamination by Covid.
President Jair Bolsonaro (PL) is a public advocate for legalizing mining on indigenous lands. In 2021, he visited indigenous lands neighboring the Yanomami twice and interacted unmasked with Indians.
In addition to Brazil, the study, which received financial support from the Swedish government and other donors, was also carried out in Venezuela, Colombia and Bolivia.
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