This conference brings together experts, researchers,
policymakers, and stakeholders within the mining sector. It
aims to create a common space to discuss the assessment
and reporting methods for environmental and human health
issues related to gold mining, with a special emphasis on
gold mining in Guyana. It will explore approaches to mitigate
these issues and strengthen collaboration for research and
community empowerment.
Opening Session
Call to Order
Calvin Bernard, Senior Lecturer, UG
National Anthem
UG Talent
Chair’s Welcome
Calvin Bernard, Senior Lecturer, UG
Overview of Event and Process
Lawrence Lachmansingh, Forest Governance Facilitator (Guyana)
Opening Remarks Prof. Paloma Mohamed Martin,
Vice-Chancellor, UG
Aiesha Williams,
Country Manager, Guyana, WWF-Guianas
Dr Laurence Maurice, Director of Research, IRD
Keynote Address Gold Mining in Guyana: approaches to ensuring sustainability
Darcy Waldron,
Head, Department of Environment, GGMC
and Guyana Focal Point for Minamata Convention
Featured Technical Presentation
Dr Laurence Maurice, Director of Research, IRD
Introduction of session
Patrick Ketwaru, Senior Lecturer, UG
Presentation 2
Elford Liverpool, Lecturer II, UG
Presentation 3
Dr Loic Martin, Postdoctoral Fellow, IRD
Panel Question and Answer
Patrick Ketwaru, Senior Lecturer, UG
Session 2 – Findings
Introduction to session An overview of the focus of the session and
introduction of the presenters
Heetasmin Singh, Lecturer II, UG
Presentation 1
Dr Loic Martin, Postdoctoral Fellow, IRD
Presentation 2
Rochelle Bynoe, BSc, UG
Presentation 3
Benita Davis, BSc, UG
Panel Question and Answer
Heetasmin Singh, Lecturer II, UG
Presentation 4
Sarah Singh, BSc, UG
Presentation 5
Joanna Faith Hope, BSc, UG
Presentation 6
Trimal Accra, BSc, UG
Presentation 7
Kezia Albert, BSc, UG
Presentation 8
Tonya Bowman, BSc, UG
Panel Question and Answer
Heetasmin Singh, Lecturer II, UG
Presentation 9
Bibi Nafeeza Amin, GIS Analyst, GFC
Presentation 10
Stephan Moonsammy
Panel Question and Answer
Heetasmin Singh, Lecturer II, UG
Session 3: – Mitigation
Introduction to session
Dr Shanomae Rose, Senior Lecturer, UG
Presentation 1
Rene Edwards, Technical Director, CI-G and Dayshawn Billingy, Consultant
Presentation 2
“Ms. Shemeiza Thom, Mineral Processing Engineer, GGMC”
Presentation 3
Godfrey Scott, Senior Environmental Officer, GGMC
Panel Question and Answer Dr Shanomae Rose, Senior Lecturer, UG
Closing remarks for the Day
Calvin Bernard, Senior Lecturer,UG
END OF DAY ONE
Welcome back and synopsis of day 1
Calvin Bernard, Senior Lecturer,UG
Round Table Discussion
Session overview, objectives and rules
Lawrence Lachmansingh, Forest Governance Facilitator (Guyana)
Facilitated discussion
Lawrence Lachmansingh, Forest Governance Facilitator (Guyana)
Welcome
Calvin Bernard, Senior Lecturer,UG
Opening Remarks
Aiesha Williams, Country Manager, WWF-Guianas,
Diane Menard, Chief of Projects, Ozone, Pollutants and Circular Economy, FFEM (Via Zoom)
Overview of programme
Lawrence Lachmansingh, Forest Governance Facilitator (Guyana)
Presentation 1
Dr Laurence Maurice, Director of Research, IRD
Presentation 2
Dr Loic Martin, Postdoctoral Fellow, IRD
Presentation 3
Aiesha Williams, Country Manager, WWF-G
Facilitated dialogue
Lawrence Lachmansingh, Forest Governance Facilitator (Guyana)
Conclusion
Lawrence Lachmansingh, Forest Governance Facilitator (Guyana)
Overall concluding remarks
Dr Laurence Maurice, Director of Research, IRD
Aiesha Williams, Country
Manager, Guyana, WWF-Guianas
Calvin Bernard, Senior Lecturer, UG
Chapters
Introduction of Session 0:00
Featured Technical Presentation 0:32
Presentation 1 33:53
Presentation 2 48:35
Panel Q and A 1:07:59
Introduction to Session 2 1:24:56
Presentation 1 1:27:31
Presentation 2 1:48:39
Presentation 3 1:59:19
Panel Q and A 2:09:57
As we move into the technical presentation and before we get a proper into the session one which would look at methods we have a featured technical presentation from one of the lead project Partners to kind of set broad tone uh for what we’ll be talking about throughout the other um sessions and so
I am pleased to invite to the podium again uh Dr laurance morrice director of research at ird and she’ll be speaking broadly on the uh impacts on the the Mercury biogeochemical cycle and Mining Laos yeah that’s okay thank you very much cvin for for introducing my presentations so that that’s okay you
Can hear me yeah so uh today I will uh I will give you some um some keys to understand the complexity of the Mercury biological chemical cycle and how the ADM smth cred good mining is impacting this uh this cycle and what are the impact on the environment but also on
The and the human a so I will first give you some numbers at the global scale and later I will zoom on some on different case study in is that okay on different case stud in in South America I will also present you some uh examples of uh experiences
Of empowerment of local population we had in um in Brazil and uh and in French Guana so um what are you doing so first everybody I’m supposed know what is Mercury Mercury is a metal um white of the right color silver it’s called quick silver and the symbol the
Chemical symbol of mercury is 8 G because the Greek name is and you can find in the different um chemical forms you can find mercine vapor form in the atmosphere you can find it in a dissolved form in inorganic and organic species and I will insist a
Lot on the organic species which is methy Mercury which is the neurotoxic which is the most uh dangerous form in a for for human and for uh and for the the living uh living right and we can also find it soled on on particles on sediment for
Example so uh the the Mercury is uh is emitted all over the world we say that there is a it’s every two year there is a very big conference dedicated only on Mercury and the title of the conference is mercury as a global pollutant Mercury is a global pollutant you can find it
Everywhere in the air in the atmosphere in water in fresh water in Marine water you can see it from the Arctic to the Antarctic and Al of course around the around the the tropics it’s a real Global pollutant and um and has been emitted since uh a long time ago so this
Is the presentation of uh of the history of the emission all over the world and the first uh the the first uh boom uh the first Rush uh was in uh of course During the incap period but also in the 19th century due to the American
Gold and Silver rush and later uh for the world war first and second you had a decrease of MRE emission and and uh from the 19th centuries and 20th Century and and right now uh the first source of emission in the environment are the coal plants so uh if we present the Mercury
Emission all over the world right now the first country that emitted mercury in the environment are uh China mainly China due to the coal plant emission uh they they build they they were building like one coal plant per per week in a sou period so it’s the
First first Emit and the second country is South America here many due to the ads uh to the gold mining uh industry and later you have Africa also there was a lot of uh gold mining activities in Africa that impact the the global emission you can find all this data in
The last uh report of the of the unep uh regarding the part of uh South America in um in the in the emission of of mercury here it’s uh South America I’m sorry the it it’s quite small but um the screen is quite small so uh so here you
Can see here it’s uh it’s uh Asia south south of Asia emission and here is South America Mercury emission and in yellow you see the part of the emission due to the gold mining activities so of course in South America you can uh calculate it’s represents
53% of mercury released in uh in the environment in the atmosphere so ICM is responsible of almost 40% of global Mercury emission all over the world is the first source of mercury in River which has been estimated recently to almost 900 tons per year and South America is responsible of most more than
50% of mcre release only by Artis and small skate board Mining and of course it’s not only the gold the Mercury emitted by uh by the gold mining activi but also emitted by the deforestation related to uh human activities the deforestation has increased in the Amazon rainforest du during uh the
Period between 1985 to 2020 it has grow of sixfold in all over the the Amazon rainforest and I know that WWF is working on on this on this issue all over uh in the in the Guan Plateau so um of course the AGM is also responsible it’s a large contributor of
The gold supply all over the world mainly and the gold is mainly used in s retirment fund electronics and National Treasures it employs till 19 millions of people all over the world so mainly in South America and in Africa it’s a high contributor to um to uh the employment
And also unfortunately it contribute to finance conflict mainly in in Africa and also facilitate money laundering and I won’t speak about all the prostitution and uh and guns and arms um um uh lering and so on so it’s a it’s a global issue which has a an important
Impact on uh not only on the environment and human health but also on social and economical uh uh issue so um so here is the map of the Mercury emission all all over the road so you see um the the most the most important Mercury emission in
The world is here in in China later in South America in gold mining countries and uh and in Africa uh so the the natural the natural sources of mercury uh there are of course natural sources of mercury in the in the environment you have um the cabor
Is the main Rock which contain a lot of of mercury and has been exploited in uh in Spain and also in uh in China you have several Mercury mining in in this country uh the the other source is the rock lixiviation soil erosion and also uh the emission by volcano volcano are
The first natural um sources of of micro emission in the world and we have been we have estimated the global natural emission to 600 T per per year regarding the anthropogenic sources the sources due to human activities uh one of the most important which it the the the issue of of this
Conference is our mining activities of course Mercury mining gold and and silver uh as I explained to you the energy production by by coal uh coal combustion uh coal plant uh it’s also used in electric cor industry in uh mcro Vapor lamps in floresent
And even in low energy um um lamps it uh it contains uh an important uh concentration of vapor Mercury so be careful you don’t have to break uh lamps in your house or everywhere because it’s uh it may emit mercury vapor in in your environment uh it’s also used in the
Chemical industry chlorine cost s production it also it was used but now now it’s um it’s forbidden in thermometers barometers thanks to the minamata convention in dentistry so there’s a large uh action plan to reduce and to stop the use of mercury in uh in the Dentistry uh it’s used in jewelry too
And of course agricultural practices also impact uh the Mercury uh cycle and and um increase the the mer reflexes in the in the atmosphere due to the biomass burning and also to the to the deforestation so you have a global budget it’s really small I’m sorry the
Screen is is small but it’s just to show you this is whoops uh this is the GE the geogenic emission which are 500 tons per year were very very small and from terrestrial uh activity from volcanic activity and um and um in Marine activities and here is the 100% um anthropogenic emission and
In yellow you have the emission of mercury after uh re reprocessing uh of natural and anthropogenic sources I won’t I won’t use this much but what I wanted to to explain to you now is the glow is the Mercury cycle in a mining area in a AGM area so for example you
Have of course it depends on the country in Guyana you don’t have volcanos but I was working in Bolivia Ecuador Peru and so on so you of course you have mercury emitted Naturally by B volcanos but you also have mercury emitted during the Aman Burning uh in the atmosphere and the
Mercur vapor in the atmosphere atmosphere is quite stable you can travel on 100 and 100 of kilometers in a dry atmosphere and when the atmosphere is becoming wet this mercury vapor is reduced and can precipitate with the rainfall and can fall on the soil on the
Reverse in the legs and so on and reentering and reenter the the hydro system and in the lakes in the rivers you have several processes that modify the speciation of these elements and one one important point I would like to to insist is that the Mercury which you may find and
Measure in soil um and in the atmosphere in in soil is trapped uh with organic matter is trapped in the soil and is quite stable why once it enters into the water into lakes into rivers um you have different processes that um that change is speciation the
Speciation of the Mercury and it can be meated that is to say that you may find some bacteria suat reductor bacteria that transform the inorganic Mercury coming from the soil erosion coming from the atmosphere into the organic mcob form and the meyl MCU the organic mcro form which is highly highly toxic and
This metalation process occurs um in uh mainly in the roots of aquatic plants and also in sediments yeah so if you want I can explain uh later and I can answer your your question but it’s an important process because it’s the organic Mercury which may enter later in the in the trophic chain
And of course you have also two processes that increase the concentration of mercury in the trophic chain the bio accumulation process and bio um magnification process and later the incidence of mercury in the human Earth of course depends on the chemical form of exposure between inorganic Mercury and organic
Mercury the inorganic Mercury is uh inhal The Merc vapor is in inhaled by gold miners and gold sailers and gold miners also use liquid mercury which can be which can enter into the byal um byal um exposure but it’s quite it’s quite few it’s it’s quite small uh the the
Most important exposure is via inhalation and the second exposure the second Expos exposure pathway is VI via the diet um as I explained to you the Mercury is bioaccumulated and bio magnified in the traffic chain so you have you may you may measure you can measure a very high concentration of
Mercury in fish in pous fishes which can be consumed by local people and this uh this organic form is the most important exposure pathway uh so the toxicity of liquid mercury on the Human air so you have three types of um of uh exposure pathway
As I explained inhalation in I I um I met some gold minerals who told me that sometimes some of them ingested the Amad gam uh the the combination of mercury and gold to avoid to declare the prod reduction they they found so sometimes some GS may also absorb liquid
Mercury and the and the third um exposure we is the dermal dermal contact and the the effects are of course important but depends on the on the exposure on the exposure level so you may have neurological disorder uh muscular disorder kidney and so on and you you also may have when you are
Highly um exposed you also may have hallucination oses trembling and so on so for for this uh exposure for the the human exposure to inorganic Mercury the best biomarker is the urine um because the Mercury is entering in the in the body and it’s exr viaa
Urine uh so urine is the best biomarker to to uh to measure the human the good mining exposure and you have threshold that can be uh overpassed depending on the on the places uh regarding the toxicity of organic Mercury it’s mainly due as I explained to the diet by uh by eating
Fish and the best bi marker for studing the the the organic exposure if the other the the human hair and you can we can observe different uh different um incidenty different impact on earring uh visual you have a reduction of uh of the of the vision R not functioning coordination of
Of the members of arms and and legs uh you have also well you may have a te it also affect the immunity um and when people are highly exposed and for a long time period it can also um affect the behavior you have a reduction of the intellectual caution
For children who are who are exposed till um um during the the pregnancy it affect the the memory di attention cerebral till till coma um so the absorption of mercury by the human body is quite um it’s it’s a an important issue because the the Mercury the organic Mercury present
Particular affinities for the brain the human brain is and and the ratio we uh we measure between the mercury in the human brain and the mercury in blood is around six so the Mercury the organic Mercury is also um concentrating is also uh uh trapped uh into uh into the into
The brain so that explain the the incidence on the neurological development of uh of people uh so uh the exposure of people to a metal mercury depends on the doses and on the time of exposure uh people were exposed since the pregnancy since their baby it affect
The neurological system and uh it’s uh and it’s irreversible effects of course the population with maor risk are the regular fish consumer and um the neurological consequences are irreversal possible so in in the Aquatic food chain you have a high increasing of mercur concentration between the water in the water you don’t
Have dissolved Mercury and L will present the result we have in in Guana but what it’s happening is that the both um uh different processes uh methylation bio accumulation and bio magnification affect um whoops affect the the mtion and you can have a differences between
The water and the muscle of pous fish of 1 million so you have a biomagnification of the Mercury uh 1 million for between water and and fish uh so the factor that control the mercury in uh in fish species are the traffic level of course people uh fish
Were which are eating fish of course are more concentrated than than um omnivorous fishes the age and the size the growth rate also affect the Mercury concentration theologic period uh if the species is sedentary or migratory and the place where the fish are living because we observe that in in
Leges in Fruit PL legs in reservoir uh we observe a high methylation uh rate which of course increase the meth M concentration in uh in in the fish uh there are a lot of documentation on the fish species who are highly concentrated in uh in Mercury we we did
Several studies in Ecuador Bolivia and Brazil so you have a large contribution you have a large bibliography on on this on this issue in French Guana we also observed uh because in general you will find information on muscle because people or mainly eat muscle of of the
Fish but in some places and in Bolivia I was working with indigenous population we were also eating the liver of the fish and what is happening is that in the liver of the fish you have in general higher concentration of mercury than in the muscle why because in the
Liver you have a detoxification process that occur in fish but also in human in human body and we also measured a demalation process your body to to detoxify from uh heavy metals from toxic Metals um it’s um the it’s it occures different processes that try to detoxify
And one of the detoxification process is the demalation that occurs in the in the liver so in the liver the concentration can be higher than in the in the muscle and also we have a biologist colleagu that um analyz uh the effect on the on the on the fish
On the muscle and also on on the liver for example and this are fish we were cat in a prison place and this in a mining area and we observed uh hepatitis of um of this liver liver cell in uh in highly exposed uh fish species uh they
Also um meas they also did a photography of um of muscle cells in uh in two different area in three different area in pristin area and in gold mining area and they also observe um uh well they observe an affection of of these stells and they also observed a
Difference in um in the way of swimming of of the fish and so on so this is for pous fish which are highly exposed to uh to Mercury um but there’s also I I was speaking of the Amazon and of the fish bishes that we uh we can find in the
Amazon basin but also in the ocean uh the pous fish are also highly exposed to Mercury and specifically tuna so the tuna and can be be uh can be can we can measure High concentration of mercury in in tunac can and for example in uh in
Canada on the tunacan you have um an an advice for pregnant women um indicating that be careful you may not uh eat um you may eat just one kind per month if you are if you are pregnant so uh there also a lot of bibliography there are lot
A lot of literature under Mercury in in tuna and uh and also in in Marine in marine fish uh on in Amazonian Community also we have a lot of of data I first work in in Bolivia and the concentration uh the highest concentration I measure of 35 microgram per gram while the limit
The ru limit is 10 and uh colleagues uh observed the first r at the five so it’s we can find in Amazonian people very high exposure and these people are living in the Amazonian um forest in area with without any um any um gold mining activities or other human
Activities so uh and the limit we propose of thean find in in fish it’s uh it’s for commercialization but what we observe is that four people were were diet is um is on is based on un fish it’s uh it’s quite difficult because the in the Amazon basing and even along the
The rivers in uh in South America a lot of people the the main uh source of protein or other fish um so there are several maps of uh Mercury of human exposure over the over this uh this Basin we publish in 2009 and now WWF in Brazil propos so a
Mapping of uh of the mercur exposure of human and also of of fish and we are working on the on the actualization of this of this database uh in French Guana also we uh we we observed that people so we we were working along the river uh between Brazil and and fr Guana
Border uh in camopi which is the mining area and tro which is the pristine region and we observe that people are merian people living in the pristin area are more exposed to Mercury than the same community living in the mining area so of course it was a bit different that
We H could expect it so we developed a tool a chemical Tool uh we are now using a stable isotop and I think that U um a colleague of univers of gu will present some data so with the stable um isotop we can also measure the well so I will
Go quickly so we we we we did um the analysis in the sediment uh in and this is the fractionation of mercury in sediment here is the liquid mercury and member and here is the sediment of the prar and member and all the points of uh of the
Sediment um uh results are in this in this line and with the a small formula we can estimate the part of hm uh in this uh in this drainage basin so the the the study has been published recently and active ACM can increase by 78% the micr concentration in sediment in active uh
In active um uh Rivers we also measured uh this fractionation on human hair of on on water on sediment on fish and on human hair and uh we it was interesting because between the pristin area and the mining area um the the women present exactly the same the main source of
Mercury is coming from the freshwater fish while the men we observe a difference in the fractionation that indicate that they have another source of mercury and uh by the and with the the questionary we uh we did uh they were also mixing their diet with with
Can and sometimes with tunac can so it’s interesting to see that isoto can also helps you to identify the different sources of of mercury in in the human diet so we also worked on the empowerment of local population uh there are several projects in in Brazil and in French Guana to help
People to reduce their exposure to limit of course the incidences so there are a lot of uh of data on that and the problem with the micro exposure is that it’s invisible You Don’t See in your body if you are highly exposed or not and so we uh uh in in Brazil colleague
From uh from Quebec uh proposed some Comics to explain the the the all the processes that could impact the the the Mercury cycle and also they propos a posture with the fish beses that people could eat and not eat of course it was essential not to create a psychosis
About eating fish and uh but they they so um explained to them what what are the impacts on the on the vision on pregnancy and so on so after this uh this information campaign they observed increasing of almost 40% of the micro exposure in the population of the
Tapajos river we did that so I will go quickly uh we did that also in fren Guana in 2014 uh we uh organized a biom monitoring on the main river of French Guana and we so uh we so proposed a different plure of fish species that that people
Could eat diary and F species that uh women who are pregnant and even kids could avoid or it just once per per month so this uh this poster has been realized after a large analysis a large amount of micro analysis in fish more than six uh
6,000 uh during uh 10 years and we also propos the same uh the same uh advices than uh than in Brazil and we also observe a decreasing uh in 10 years of of the mer human exposure so now we are now we are moving from academic um uh research to uh to a
Co-construction of adapted and uh uh sustainable solution with local people with miners with uh with stakeholders to uh co- construct with the with the population solution allowing to adapt and reduce the environmental and health impact but of course uh respecting the traditional Lage and and cure so I’m done thank you for your
[Applause] attention thank you very much lauron uh and thank you for cooperating with me uh so we’re going to go into those uh sessions that you note based on your agenda that we will have a series of presentations that are somewhat related and then we’ll take the panel of
Presenters uh to have the questions and answers uh I’m sure you may have questions in relation to laon’s presentation but she will be in the panel that comes up after um session one so with that I’ll hand over to uh my good friend Patrick kwaru and he is
Going to be the chair for the first session Patrick good morning everyone and welcome um this is going to be the um the first session of you could say more technical stuff and um I think we had quite a good um start by um laon’s um presentation so that give us quite a
Wide overview of the issues and what you’d find is that these presentations these technical presentations that actually now moved into various aspects of that um so let’s um get started um so I’ll ask um Dr L Martin to um come and do his presentation which is based on
The methods by the proposed by the project as standard form monitoring mercury in in environmental and biological samples and there is Need for standardization and those are some of the things we I hope we’ll be able to discuss in the panel one okay good morning everybody uh so I’m Lo
Uh working with Laurence at I in France uh so I’m going to present the the set of methods we use during the project the Mercury phase out project and U when we sampled all the environmental compartment and biological sample so the idea is to show the protocol we
Use in our lab in tulus and how it could be used to monitor uh the EnV environmental level of mercury in aquatic system and also the level of exposure of people living in rean area um okay I use that okay perfect so we have type of
Sample versus type of matri to work with the different kind of analysis and sampling we can do in uh in aquatic system so first biological sample so it could be human air to assess the level of exposure of people it’s a good biomarker for meil mercury the the form that
Laurence presented as the most dangerous for uh human beings and uh this exposure is done by fish uh consumption so we need to sample fish tissue to see to assess the level of merury in those uh animals there is also environmental samples like water fresh water for from
River suspended particle which which are in suspension in rivers soil sediment and litter and leavs uh then the matrices that comes with that are either liquid or solid so the analysis will depend of the kind of Matrix we have uh first before to do any analysis we need to sample the the
Samples uh when we sample water and sediment when you have nice water like that oh sorry like this one you see it’s like a bit of mud we use some PTF bottles to collect the sample from the from the pond from the river anyway and we have
To filtrate it in a filtration tank where on the top you have the the the not clean water let like that and then the the filtrate and in the middle we use teflon filters to recover the suspended particle where which we will analyze for mercury in suspended matter
Uh when the filtration is done uh we we we stabilize the sample in Teflon bottle the filate with 0.4 with 0.4 um uh HCL in volume and we store it at 4° to avoid any Mercury loss or um Stu like that and we keep the filters in uh
P three slide box small box where the filter is uh isolated from the atmosphere and we dry it and laminar flow uh this work is quite uh not difficult but we have to be careful when we work on those samples because uh there is few mercury in water really few and cont
Possibility of contamination from anywhere around could be really uh not dangerous but could happen really quickly and really easily so we need to work in quite clean environment and we need to to work with clean acids like in our lab we the H we use is either a
Trust metal grade or a B BD side uh all tanks and everything I wash with uh 10% HL before to work and we uh on the field it’s not possible to wash everything with HL of course so between samples we wash it with mure water or Ultra Pure Water carry with
Uh uh when we simple Sol s and tailings um it’s it’s quite easy this one you don’t you don’t risk any contamination from cross contamination from the environment but uh what is really uh tricky is that we we need to to sample at the right position especially for
Sediment because you you have sediment transport in Reverse so you you cannot sample everywhere sometimes otherwise we will just find sand and we cannot do anything with that or you you you won’t Target the right position or you will have the the so from river banks for
Instance coming to the river and this is not the one you want to have to understand uh what is the level of mercury in new system so basically we we sample everything with uh egman bench which allow us to go in the middle of the river and Sample uh the bottom
Sediment we use oer for soil and and then we store it in in deep loock bags and we work with the and we dry it before to go to the lab uh when we come back when we arrive in the lab we dry it
At 35° not too hot to avoid any L of mercury and we amize everything with sething first and then we crush it for before analysis fish uh so uh when you collect fish you need for mercury and uh understanding you need to have length and weight it’s
Un scale then we take a small part of the flesh with a clean knife and we we freeze it before to go to the lab and then we freeze dry it and crush it before analysis uh Human air so you see Lauren is collecting some air from a past
Mission uh we we take uh strength from the back of the cell like three or more uh depends of the size of the of the Strength for Men it’s more than three and for wom it’s enough and we store it in bags and we shoed it before to to
Analyze it so now we come to the part of analysis uh which is where it’s more interesting I guess um liquid so for us we analyze only water in in a liquid way and also we mineralize suspended particulate matter from filters so the preparation is quite easy for what you
Just oxidize mercur organic complexes with uh uh B chloride which allow us to have only Mercury 2 in the in the in the dissolve water for suspended particle we do a digestion on o plates in a clean SX we dute each extract and we also use uh oxidation with brome chloride to to
Have only um Mercury 2 in in the solution why Mercury 2 because when you analyze Mercury you do it we do it with a gold trap C VOR C vapor at Atomic fluorescent spectometer which means that the first part is uh reducing Mercury Mercury 2 in Mercury 0 Mercury 0
Is a gas and it goes uh to the gold trap the gold trap help us to we do the same as the minor but in a reverse well like that we we it help us to preconcentrate the sample then we burn the the gold trap and we have uh a classic uh
Atomic cence detection and this help us to have to to reach low level of of mercury concentration we go to until 0.5 nog per liter which is 0.5 PPT it’s quite quite low and we we can go really really low in concentration okay uh solid solid we use uh either a
Direct Mercury analyzer or an advanced Mercury analyzer which are the technique is the same basically you burn your sample at 800° the Mercury is released as a gas we have um okay no no way foret I forget the name in English sorry yeah but basically the sample is clean through through carbon
Through active carbon to avoid any interferences and then you have a a classic uh uh fluoresence analysis uh and then this is quite easy because you don’t need further preparation for the sample when you take a fish a solid anywh a a sediment or a um
I don’t know siment and a human air you just put it in some boats here and you do the analysis so it’s quite just has to be crushed to be really well homogenized uh so in all the case and all the technique I presented we we have to do calibration
Of course and quality control so all our analysis are externally calibrated uh the stand the calibration standards are done in the same matrices of the sample so when it’s a sediment we use a sediment as a as a standard when it’s water we use a water uh and also uh for
Instance fory filters I use the same mat as the filters uh we consider two type of blanks the analytical one uh all the analytical rent and the and the the blank has followed the same procedure as the sample to be sure that we we don’t have any cross contamination during the
Process uh there is also of course with blanks to be sure that the solid the the acid are in good quality in when we work M Mercury um the quality of the acid is really important because it’s the first way of contaminating your sample especially because uh a pure chloric
Acid if it’s not stored really well for instance will trap the Mercury from the atmosphere and you will have a polyd acid and if you use it to do your your analysis at the end you you you pollute you will pollute your sample we have we calculate detection
Limit uh which is the the the derivation of the we we do it with 12 blanks most of the time it’s analytical blanks like that we we know that what is the level of the quality level of our analysis and the detection limit is three times the mean of the blanks and the
Quantification limit is St times the mean of the BL uh All sample are analyzed in triplicates like that we have the the variation of the of the the concentration and uh we use certified reference material to control three parameters uh accuracy yield and reability uh for mineralization also we
Use a certified reference materials to check the yield of the protocols that uh we include one in the sample to be sure that uh we find the right concentration at the end of the process so uh the accuracy is basically the standard deviation of your measured certified reference over the mean of the
Measured con uh concentration uh the Rob ability is the average uh the mean of the concentration measured over the concentration certified minus one and uh the yield is uh the mean uh measured concentration over the certified concentration by 100 to a per percentage the yield is the one we use the most to
Control the quality of the data and also the evolution of the of of the of the run because sometimes we analyze 100 200 sample in one day so we check also the the deviation of the signal during analysis and and so on so here is a list
Of the standard reference we use for mercury analysis uh every time we choose in choose them in function of uh the type of matrices we analyze and the expect concentration range so for sediment we use of course uh Esty sediment uh sometime coal when we want to go in low concentration we have
Polluted soil also that could be used when it’s a high concentration in Mercury for tailing for instance and uh when it’s for Human air we have also some reference material and for fish we use Lobster uh uh aop pancreases and also muscle tissues to to check the the quality of the of the
Measurement so yeah that was my last slide so basically it summarize how we process all the sample we collect from the field and what we did here uh during the field Mission and all this protocol was used to to to have the data I will present a
Bit later during the day uh for the project thank [Applause] you thank you loric um that was quite interesting and um we actually do some of this work right here at the University and it would be I guess if anyone is interested tomorrow we have a
Few students in our final year who would actually be going through the cold Vapor um analysis um tomorrow morning we’ll be doing that um thank you we go on to alred miss m alred Liverpool Dr yet he’s there he’s going there um and he will be looking at um his his topic thank
You thank you chair good morning all protocols observed uh today I’ll be uh complimenting some of what uh Dr luck uh just mentioned uh in the context of what we did in the middle and lower mazeron uh sections in Guyana uh where we try to integrate stabil isotope uh analysis to
Reconstruct uh food web and uh look at food web ecology in fishes in the uh mazeron River uh this is a collaborative initiative with uh Dr Montana and uh Dr tapor and other colleagues from the US and so uh the objective really was to sorry let me um yeah the objective really was To yeah the objective really was to uh see how we can uh make interconnections with all right P yeah check yeah so the idea is to apply stabil isotope as I mentioned to model the movement of mercury through the uh aquatic uh system uh in the context of
Uh food web ecology so we set out to uh explore a number of uh methods and a number of of initiatives in order to gather data to uh try decipher what’s going on in terms of uh food web ecology in the middle majeroni sections of Guyana so stabil isotope in general is a
Unique uh tool that is used to provide insights into various aspects of ecological processes uh trophic Dynamics and more importantly it also can be a useful tool in providing insight into pollutant Pathways uh and it’s also crucial in understanding and managing uh for example fresh water uh
Ecosystems uh I know my two colleagues earlier presented on the mercy Isotopes and lck went into more details with regards to the laboratory as is uh with regards to uh testing for mercury so Mercury Isotopes are usually used as a tracer of pollution uh just like any other heavy metal uh within the
Ecosystems and it is very crucial in terms of our understanding of how merury moves through the uh environment carbon isotope is an important measure of it’s an important measure of primary production within an ecosystem and so it gives us an Insight in terms of energy sources within the
Ecosystem so it kind of gives us an idea of uh where our sources of energies are coming from what do we eat right so you can look at an organism run uh carbon isotope analysis and you can tell uh the sources of where they’re getting their
Food from in more complex models uh you can actually calculate uh the percentage of uh the various sources of your food uh resources using carbon Isotopes nitrogen Isotopes give an idea of your trophic position within the ecosystem so whether you’re an arbore whether you’re omnivore or a carnivore or whether
You’re feeding at the top of the uh food chain so it’s also an important tool uh in terms of deciphering what’s going on in terms of uh vertical movement for example of mercury within the ecosystem so by combining these these three uh isotopic uh tools we can have a more comprehensive
Understanding of the movement of mercury within uh various Pathways so here is an example here we have a simple biplot model of uh some basal food resources and when I say basal food resources uh these are usually the uh photosynthetic arm within the ecosystem they capable of uh making
And producing their own Foods we have invertebrates so many of these invertebrates would feed on uh the producers within those ecosystem and then in turn we may have uh fishes uh that feed on these invertebrates or may feed on the basal food resources themselves uh and in turn that creates a
Chain and it can go want to be more complex of a nature in terms of a food web uh then you have humans going and eat those fishes and they may probably go more above those uh black triangles that we’re seeing there but what basically happens is that The Closer you
Are to a particular Source in terms of the the carbon uh Isotopes uh you your source of energy uh usually comes from that source so for example most of the fishes that are in the black triangle there and the invertebrates they usually get their uh food sources from the extreme uh right
Of the ground those are the fyans uh so you can see a kind of vertical movement going up from the basal fyon invertebrates feeding on those and then the fish is feeding on those invertebrates within that complex Matrix of of the uh fishes uh you have uh omnivores you have carnivores and you
Have peores so the PCV are the usually the top predators within the ecosystems and they would usually feed on other fishes and so uh they they are usually the ones that have higher evidence of merury uh by accumulation within those systems so what we did in our study is that we carefully
Uh integrate a number of of techniques starting from site selection processes what we tried to do we try to compare uh data that was collected between sampling sites that were mining impacted versus sites that were not uh so mining uh impacted Within in the stretches of those rivers and their
Tributaries after careful uh selection of of of Mining and non-mining impacted sites what we went on to do is to try break down those sites into F the uh subcategories of of uh macro habitats whether they’re riffles whe they’re runs whether they’re pools so that we can have varying uh subcategories of habitat
Or variability in terms of um habitat types that we sample so we not only sampling pool we sampling where we have Rapids and ripples we are also sampling where we have flow uh these different habitats um have different productivity levels and so on uh which I won’t go too
Much into but in addition to that we also want to sample sites using a number of different uh techniques and these techniques that we use must be uh statistically comparable across sites so one of the important uh uh components in terms of our sampling is we do a
Diversification in terms of our sampling techniques when it comes to for example uh fish sampling uh we use a combination of uh Gil Nets we use uh dip Nets we use kick netting s netting and uh in some cases we use uh traditional uh fish poisons uh from uh our uh amaran uh
Bedin and we also uh would uh piure fish samples from you know the regular carts during our uh field survey so it maximizes our uh sampling it maximizes the diversity in terms of uh fish sizes and also the different types of trophic uh position so we must be
Able to capture fish samples that span uh orbs right up to the tertiary consumers in our sampling strategy uh so for us to build a better understanding of you know how much mercues are are being positioned at each level and how it’s being bioaccumulated invertebrate sampling usually use a number of other techniques
Mainly uh these are uh stetting and kick netting when we do our samplings as well and so we have made that a a standard part of our procedures because they’re also part of the uh consumers the primary consumers within those uh ecosystems fish body size uh in terms of
Uh total and standard length uh are usually uh form of measurement and it’s important as uh a measurement of our bio accumulation uh factor and weight uh we usually measure those in mm and the weight we take in gram for all specimens that we’re uh sampling within that survey site
Muscle tissues are usually the primary focus in our case uh we usually take a a dorsal piece of uh muscle tissue from the fishes and we preserve them for mercury and we preserve them for Isotopes for Isotopes we usually put them in a sterilized zip zipl bag and we add salt
Common non-iodized table salt see to be the best preservative um technique for uh preserving stabiliz samples so that we can take them for further laboratory analysis for mercury samples we usually uh store them on ice or in liquid nitrogen in sterilized vials or sterilized zipl bags as well uh or my
Colleague pointed out uh there are other parts that are also uh retain high levels of mercury like the Le liver and so that might be uh that may be another technique that we can integrate other than collecting standard uh fish muscle uh tissues for sampling in terms of uh primary
Producers and uh other uh basal food resources we usually try to take for each site okay we usually try to take for each site all the possible uh sources of food for uh the various fishes that we sampling so we will collect moss and algae we
Will collect uh fruits Leaf lit and any other surrounding organic uh material or detrital that are present within that tabat resampling as part of a more comprehensive technique in terms of sampling uh for uh for stabilizers to to have a better understanding of uh what these fishes are feeding on when we building
Our models uh in addition to that uh basal resources and and uh other uh samples we also take water samples and sediment samples as outlined by uh Dr Lu earlier it is also important to note that with building these these uh food web models it’s important to take
Reference and Baseline material so we must have reference material uh in terms of water sample atmospheric samples sediment soil samples for uh especially Mory isotope if we want to trace for example the source as outlined earlier we also do take a number of environmental parameters uh including pH temperature dissolve oxygen uh turbidity
Which is uh indicator of of mining uh pollution in many of our freshwater streams and one of the ex more extensive uh component in our sampling is habitat description or habitat characterization where we looked at all the different uh characteristics that are either substrate based within the uh channels or stream
And we look at surrounding uh Riverbank uh characteristics like percentage trees percentage uh shrubs grass uh Leaf litter and so forth soil types so we build a more complex uh uh data collection uh sheet when dealing with uh data collection for uh modeling Mary uh our samples when we bring those
Samples out we uh usually uh prep them and we send them overseas uh for laboratory analysis uh using standard procedures as outlined previously uh in terms of statistical analysis there are a number of tools that are out there that we can plug all of these data that we collect in and we
Can come up with more complex uh models to give us an Insight of uh What uh or or deciphering what is going on in terms of energy flow and Mark contamination within and uh of the food chain here is an example of uh what we found in our uh initial
Survey uh in our mining sites and our non- mine sites we found that uh most of the fishes in the mindsight are more associated with uh alal um uh with the tritus or or bentic algae and the there’s some variation in terms of what’s going on in terms of
Mind uh non- mind sites but all in all in both non non-m mind and mind s sites we found that Mar is being bioaccumulated in the tertiary uh consumers more so the PC boards and the carnivores within um those EOS systems and so um this this vertical movement of mercury within that
System in addition to that a use of uh total Mercury and nitrogen Isotopes provides uh an Insight in terms of Bio accumulation as well of the food chain and so um it’s a clear picture of how the merury uh moves up the food chain as well many of the fishes that we
Collect are food fishes and so if you notice they are above the wh uh guidelines for uh consumption and that’s the end thank you thank you Alford and that is the end of this for session but I’d like to invite um the three um presenters who presented
Just now to um go on stage and um we will then the audience feel free to ask questions move the mic just um if you haven’t had a snack please feel free to quickly as you get here to grab something it’s solid the there now um use a Ric or have a
All um while you’re having your snacks you could you could go ahead and start um we could start with the questions right okay and for those online you could indicate in the chat that you you want to ask question or you could type it in and we’ll pass it on today to the
Panelist so over to you guys ask a question we had some very interesting presentations and it was quite a wide um scope so feel free to ask the questions when you’re asking just so that the rurs can keep recording just identify yourself please will wford I’m representing the Guyana golden diamond miners
Association I have just a quick question to understand understand how it was done Mr Liverpool I think it is you said middle mazeron which area you’re calling middle Marin you could give PL name and secondly do you sample in the main mazeron or in the Creeks that flow into the
Mazeron thank you uh Mr Wolford we the middle mazeron section that we worked was from uh ISU uh right down to um uh bartica so the middle and the lower maoni um in terms of sampling sampling was done both in the main channel of the mazeron as well as all the possible
Tributaries and Creeks within that that system I asked that because I I didn’t hear you mention seasonal deration in the wet season it’s horrendous how did you manage that or you didn’t sampling the wet season we did both wet and dry seasons um during that that survey yeah managed to sample
In the wet season yes we managed to sample in the wet Seasons all right uh we go where it’s wable and and where we could uh you know we can fish within the water without risking um you know drong what what we found in practice is that
During the West season the F te to go into the side Creek to the side yeah so you wouldn’t uh we use Gil Nets kick Nets a number of different uh combination of techniques to sample those all right fishes and then just a quick comment you mentioned at the last
That you send the samples overseas yeah anything working in our favor to get the sampling test work done here yes uh because that was a collaborative initiative um the the idea was to uh send the sample overseas initially but now the university through um the chemistry lab uh as that facilities and
As Mr kwaru pointed out uh there’s uh the capacity to run those uh analysis now to you loric um one of the things I noticed you using the dma in terms of your equipment equipment we have the I I noticed you you mention the um the coold
Vapor system also in terms of some um which see you you did some I start in red right at the top of the slide so I am wondering we don’t have the dma and that can be quite expensive to get into but we do have the cold Vapor facilities
How do we and you’re trying to develop a standard method how would your method um correspond to other our method and what can we do so that we could get some kind of um you could say generally acceptable levels of congruence with our results say from the cold Vapor against your dma
And what would we need to do um because it would be important that we we put something like that in place to develop later on for these kind of international collaborations where you’re using different techniques in terms of instrumentation thank you thank you for for the question
Um when you have a cold Vapor as long as you can you generate Gus Mercury and you can analyze it with a spectrometer either are fluences or absorption so I guess you have absorption here correct so what what is uh possible to do uh is
To for the solid matrices I mean you can mineralize it the same as I did for the suspended partic calate M with reverse acaria you can do it also for fish for sediment for soil and then you have to dilute your sample to reduce the mattress effect and to have an
Acceptable level of uh of uh of Aquaria in your uh in your mattress in our case we work with 0.5% when we do a cold Vapor analysis with ifs after it just because the gold trap is not supporting a lot of acid otherwise you will destroy
It and you won’t be able to have a good uh analysis before after but then it’s uh as long as you you continue to to use certified reference material during your mineralization and you check the yield of mineralization with certified materials and then you you can you can
Do liquid analysis with sediment and soil and fish it’s just that we have a dma and I’m lazy and it’s reach it’s much more easier to do it on a dma than doing it with a yeah we have three yeah it’s true but it’s it’s much it’s easier
Because you you just have to create a sample and you do the analysis but but we we collaborate also with people around the world in Brazil for instance and they do they do liquid analysis for fish sediments it’s just a matter of uh yeah using certified reference material
To to to control the rate the yield of uh of mineralization and then you can do c Vapor analysis for sure good morning Alex from the GU Wildlife Commission um I have a question on the sampling on the techniques um I notice fishes would have been mentioned throughout the three presentations um
What about other species of animals that utilize these um waterways that sample like the copy barers we have snakes we have reptiles like the kind month is there any sampling of those species for more free yeah thank you for your question uh in French Guana and in Bolivia and in
Ecuador we also sample cment because cment of course sometimes are also eaten by local people so we were worried about the Merc concentration in the in these animals are there are Fish Eaters so what we observed that the Mercury exposure of cment in the Amazon uh in Amazonian
Rivers is at the same level than canorous fish species canos and fos but many canos fish species so the micro exposure of cment are quite uh quite high so we also share the results with the local people and say that be careful by eating cment it can be a well uh you
Have to take care mainly for pregnant women and kids and children uh regarding other regarding terrestrial animals the I have colleagues not not me personally but colleagues are so sample and analyze teral animals and they don’t find they didn’t find a uh exposure of high M concentration interest your animals in you have
There is also team that sample fishing birds for instance uh I don’t know exactly the Reas because uh we are not yeah King Fish yeah yeah thank you king fisher because they they they eat fish so it’s it could be like for human people eating fish but I I won’t say
Anything about the result because I’m not specialist and I don’t know exactly how much uh Expos they are or if there is an impact on their health but uh King Fish are also sample in in Peru and in in Brazil there is studies about that uh
But we we we are not really with Lauren for instance in our lab we are not really specializ of that so we we don’t sample kind of we yeah uh we have a colleague who did the Mercury analysis in Marine seab bir in seber and uh M all over the road in the
Pacific from the Arctic to uh to the Southern Pacific and uh also aniz the Mercury stable isotop and uh to see the difference between the living places of uh of this uh of these birds and so you have some uh some resorts and of course they are
They high Exposed Of course but the it was mainly to understand uh the Mercury cycle uh uh between terrest and Marine environments all over the world than uh the health issue because people don’t eat uh this kind of bir any questions online okay so maybe I’ll I’ll just
Throw one out um for I guess it’s applicable to all of three uh presenters in relation to tracing mercury in humans and the sources and and and how the uh the amount of Merc may vary based on diet I’m wondering what are the uh methods you would use uh with regards to
That because I can’t remember maybe I missed it LO but were you did you talk about any complimentary data that’s collected when taking a human sample uh in relation to their diet or or or um other habits uh um if you did I I missed it and if you
Could just repeat it if you didn’t you can just shine some light on that and I wonder in relation to what Alfred was talking about whether or not this is um the stabil Isotopes is but the kind of tissues that you need to study stabilizer to can we take that ethically
From human beings so we able to do the same kind of tracking of the sources uh cuz I presume you’d have to be doing self-reporting of the diet not a not a d muscle but I’m just wondering about those things thanks yeah thank you cvin for your question so as I presented very
Very quickly um we measured the stable microtops in uh in human samples but only in human hair yeah so as I explained in the presentation human hair is the best biomarker for organic micro exposure for the metal Mercury uh exposure which main source is the diet so we analyze uh mercury stabil isotop
In human hair but also in the fishes in the different fish species that people could also uh eat regularly and what we observed is that there is it’s really interesting because uh the advantage of the Mercury stable isotop is that we have two types I did
Don’t have the time to explain but we have two different fractionation we have a mass dependent fractionation which is a small Delta 202 and we have a an independent mass vacination and very few elements very few chemical elements there is oxygen so so for and so on there are very few
Element that present this double fractionation so we use both fractionation Mass dependence and Mass independent fractionation to trace processes and to trace the sources the mass dependent fractionation is used to trace the processes of spaci of the Mercury between the different compartment between water sediment fish
Human so on and we use the mass independent fractionation ratio which is the captor Delta 2011 or 199 to uh identify and to trace the Mercury sources in in one sample so for human hair we use we see that we have a mass dependent fractionation between prey and
Predator for example between fish and human we have uh an in quisine and we were the first to publish this uh this results uh with uh when we were working in in Bolivia so there is a mass dependent fractionation between fish and human hair of two per
Meal yeah and and uh the and with this mag vacination we can see um that there is a difference between pre and Predator we also analyze um the stable microtops in human hair of pregnant women and of their kids and we’re so observed like a predator like pre Predator between babies and and
Women it was really interesting and we use the independent Mass fation between fish and human hair to quantify and to find not to conty but to trace the the different sources in the diet and we see a difference in this Mass independent fractionation between freshwat fish species and marine
Waterfish species as I presented before and we also see a difference between freshwat fish species that are living in the mainstream and freshwater fish species that are living also in Fruit pane Lakes we have we have a vaccination so regarding the mass independ vaccination we can say which kind of
Fish beses people are e eing Marin or fresh water and if this fish are many spending their Liv in the mainstream or in the legs we have we published several papers on that if you’re interested then but it’s it’s really a a very very interesting um uh tool of course we
Can’t we we can’t um say nothing about uh the ACM impact on the on the human exposure it’s just only on the diet thank you panelists um we have come to the end of this first session thank you and um so now we will move uh on to
The next session and with um my colleague from the Department of Chemistry uh Miss tasmin Singh she will be um be the um modulator moderator in this new new session all right good morning everyone again it’s almost midday I hope you all are refreshed after the snack yes good all
Right so uh I have the distinct pleasure of welcoming you to session two which is um findings so session two is actually a really long session we have 10 presenters um so that means they all getting lunch till 2:00 I I’m kidding I’m kidding um we will actually take three presentations
First and then we’ll take a break for lunch and then um we’ll come back to the last seven so I am really really happy and excited about the finding session the finding session we’re first of all going to hear from our International partner um and their research and some
Of the the findings they’ve um basically accumulated in with their work in Guyana uh but also we’re going to hear from a lot of work that was done by our local people people from the University of Guyana students and staff some of these presentations were undergraduate projects people from chemistry biology
Environmental sciences and so from a wide range of disciplines we’re able to um coate this session now for you on on the various um topics related to Mercury um mining in Guyana impacts of gold mining so it’s um you’re going to hear about impacts on human health we did a
Few studies on um Mercury found in here samples of people in indigenous Villages um we’re going to hear about biodiversity impacts as well for us cover and then also I know one of our colleagues or two of them are going to be more on the social sciences side
Where they’re going to be looking at um how has it impacted our achievement um of sustainable development goals or progress to it anyways so looking forward to a really exciting session and our ability at the University of Guyana to Showcase what we are capable of doing with very very little little or limited
Resources and to make sure that our International Partners see the value or the potential in our people and can help to support us in the future so let me start by um introducing or welcoming Dr L Martin um from ird and then we’ll go into the auto presenters relle and
Bonito yeah it’s me again don’t worry it’s my life my last talk so I’m going to present uh all the findings we have with the Mercury phas out project in Guyana so uh before to to start I will thanks my colleagues from tulus uh yuren and
Laurence and lur uh for all the work in the lab and in in in administration and so on uh and also I cannot forget cevon and AA for the Gan part of the work and all the help to to make the field possible and all the mission possible
Because organizing that from France was quite hard so it was yeah without both of them uh nothing of those results would have been possible to to be shown today and also the people who helped us and came with us on the field relle who is here she’s not just listening but
Yeah and also alord andon we who is not there today but without them also it would have been much more difficult to sample all the the river in Guyana so uh the supporting Mercury phas out project in the gyas was done both in seram and Guyana I will just focus on
The guyan part today uh with Lawrence we are working on the component three which is the sorry the regional Mercury Observatory and the evid evidence-based Mercury pH out uh so we we we raised the question when we start the project uh what is the spread and the origin of
Mercury contamination in the different different region in Guyana and also what is the level of exposure of the rayan population uh so we focused and uh on aquatic environment and Aquatic uh systems so the Mercury cycle in those system is has uh two kind of sources natural sources
Coming from natural erosion and soil mobilization so it’s called the theogenic uh Mercury and we also have uh some anthropogenic sources the first one come from artisanal and small scale gold mining which is amalgam burning by burning the amalgam you release gasos mercury in the atmosphere and this gasos
Mercury is deposited in the area uh and this is a source of mercury contamination for soil and after erosion it’s a contamination it’s a possible contamination for rever systems we also have uh um the when they do the process of recovering the gold they use liquid mercury before burning alag gamiss and
You can have also uh release of liquid mercury in the environment and uh the last is uh deforestation also due to gold mining because you need to Deforest when you do gold mining but also for slash and burn agriculture or loging for instance so when you DeForest you have
An excess you you create an excess of erosion that release release a lot of particles in the river so all of those s es uh play in the Mercury mobilization to reverse and uh in this reverse you have uh mation uh and this uh is a conversion of inorganic Mercury to organic Mercury
And this organic Mercury form is the one that is bio uh uh accumulated and bio Amplified in the food in fish uh and that could uh threat the health of human people living along those Rivers so the area we studied in Guyana were quite uh the idea was to have pristine
Areas and Mining areas pristin is was quite tough to find actually uh we try to work a bit in in um in neama in the Bobo River and or in the searon rivers on their tributaries uh in iok you can have some uh uh pristin Rivers let’s say like that
And we work also in the potaro river uh vacine and the mazaruni river vacine uh mostly uh around Mia and myobi in the potaro river and to the the mixing with the shibo river and in the mazaruni it was mostly the lower and the middle
Maoni from ISU to to baa and all the tributaries not all the tributaries the one we could access uh we did two Tom sampling campaign for for this project uh with wanted to have one in low flow one in high flow but it was not really possible to do that so the iological
Condition were uh roughly the same but sometimes the river was a bit lower than expected but let’s say that it was mostly high flow compared to the low flow you have today for instance um the sample we took was were water fresh water sediments soil and tailings uh the biological sample were
Human air and fish of course and uh for for Human air sampling we worked with the mostly with the indigenous Village karuma and T tacin in in the middle mazaruni Fair View when we were inok and MOB and cumon MAA when we were in the Poo
Area uh first I will go present the environmental data uh mercury in River so we measured two kind of mercury we did Total Mercury analysis sorry and speciation analysis total Mercury by uh cold Vapor C Vapor no sorry gold trap CVS like I presented earlier on the uh disel coloidal
Fraction which is below 0.45 micrometer and also on the suspended uh particulate meter and for the the disolved we did also an analysis in organic Mercury with Persian trap uh uh gcvs to have the uh me Mercury fraction of the this water so the results basically uh all the organic Mercury uh
Concentration were below our detection limit uh we we have some issue to be honest with the with the device uh so the detection limit is a bit higher than we expected so that’s why we we were not able to really have concentration in me Mercury water but anyway the fraction is really low
0 sorry 0 .1 nog per liter is really a low value in term of of of mercury concentration in water and to to to give you an idea the I forgot to mention it but uh no maybe after it I don’t know I why I Cann move again
Okay okay so sorry so yes the drinking water limit is uh 2,000 nog per liter from the wh and uscpa so it means that basically there is nothing when we speak about 0.9 0.1 n if we go to the to the different uh area where we sample so uh we see that
Here on the top it’s the diesel fraction term of mercury total Mercury concentration and here is the uh suspended particulate meter we range from uh 1 nog per liter to the highest one was around 30 nog per liter in the dissolve it was observed in
The in the in the potaro area and in the suspended particulate meter is the same we range from one to uh 250 nog per liter which is quite low in term of mercury concentration in the water column uh there is uh no significant difference between mining areas and non-mining areas so
Uh the level of mercury in waters is basically the same everywhere with some differences we see that uh here it’s so in green no not in Green in Brown It’s Theo in blue it’s the tributary of the mazaruni uh in in dark blue is the mazeron itself uh here in gold is the
Are the tributaries of the potaro river and the potaro river here and in green it’s the searon area so we see that maybe the poo is a bit higher than the others we can explain that by a lower pH but we didn’t see any correlation between total Mercury
Concentration and pH or in no correlation also between total Mercury concentration in the water and the organic carbon concentration in the water which are the the physical chemical physical parameters that play the most for the Mercury uh speciation and and and for the mercury in the dissol phas of of the
WEA uh now total mercury in soil sediment and tailing so uh here uh are sediment in mining areas here in pristin areas for the mazaruni here is the tailings are the tailings and here are uh PR no what I no sorry sediment in mining areas for all the river poo Masari
Andaron uh sediment in Christian areas tailing so mining waste basically everything that we recovered from mining activities soil in pristine areas and soil in mining areas all was analyzed by a direct Mercury analyzer and we didn’t see any differences between the different compartments the concentration were quite homogeneous and there is no
Uh higher concentration of mercury in tailing for instance and uh there is not so much difference also between uh mining areas and precin areas uh to just to compare a bit those are data from French Guyana well the screen is low so we cannot see it really well
But the we have we are in an average range of 100 to 150 ppb of Mercury in the solid phases in Guyana and in French Guyana depending on the area it was a bit higher but basically we are in the same range of what we observe in French
Guyana which is quite logical at the end because we we are in the same uh geological uh unit uh yeah so now now comes the funny part so uh so we did for the sediment and the soil and the tailings Mercury sa isotop analysis but uh so basically we digest the sample in
Acaria we do pent TR to purify the Matrix and then we do analyis analyzis with cold Vapor to generate G merury and we couple that to a mass cting icpms meaning that with that we are able to count the abundance of uh uh of the Mercury
Isotopes so what you see in this graph is so as lawence explained a bit during The Question we have two kind kind of uh fractionation uh in Mercury Mass dependent one which is on this axis small Delta 202 and need dependent Mass fractionation uh which is uh big Delta 9
Y1 uh so all the dots you see here are the result for uh Guyana we have uh Square which are uh the soil uh the diamond are the reverse sediment uh the cross here are for liquid mercury and the triangle are for tailings or mining waste in
General uh when it’s in green it means that it’s pristin when we say pristin or mining area it’s based on the local knowledge or what we see on the map a pristine river is not mined uh supposedly and um mining area is the river where there is mining activities
That were done either in the past or are active and we also have black dots you cannot see them really well but it’s uh what we sample Downstream uh mining activities batica between the mixing of the kui and the the mazaruni and Theo at this area you you have also some tailings
Here uh the two green I don’t know if you see well are those from French Guyana they are really in concentration we know that there is liquid mercury in in it and we also have those one from Guyana that one is the ear and one is
Earth yeah I will come back to that later uh what we see also is that there is two it’s a mixing model there is two uh and members one is due to or and mine tailings uh Associated also with uh liquid mercury and also anthropogenic Gus Mercury emission which
Means that all of that is uh one and member and we have also Preen areas and to this as member I mean you have a you you are going close to zero in the big Delta anomaly in this side you have the precin sediment and the precin soil or
And Disturbed soil those one they are lower in um more negative in in both uh big Delta and small daa uh fractionation so what we see in the Gan River basically is that there is a mixing between all M tailings and liquid mercury in siment with undis and pristine
Sediment uh and some River are more impacted than other by this kind of mixing um a low anomaly an anomaly a big Delta anomal close to zero mean doesn’t mean necessarily liquid mercury it could be a mixing with uh Or a mind tailing that is not full of of liquid mercury the concentration will help us to understand uh the concentration in Mercury I mean will help us to understand if there is liquid mercury or not uh in the case of Guyana when we check our result it comes to the
Second graph so I put on this area the big Delta I don’t know yeah yeah I know okay so no next slide yeah than no yeah what you see here is that so there is no relationship between Mercury concentration and the big Delta anomaly meaning that there is no
Increase of uh there is no pollution of liquid mercury at Regional scale we cannot find it in the sediment because you see an increase a pollution in liquid mercury means uh an addition of mercury uh based on on the geological background that you will find in sediment in this case the liquid mercury
Input will be uh summarized by the anomaly closing to zero and all those group of sample for instance here they are closing to zero but the concentration is quite low it’s close to the geogenic background which is around 100 uh ppb of mercury so what we see is
That um the geogenic background remain dominant in our system but it doesn’t mean it means that there is I think no liquid uh I mean no liquid input of uh no liquid mercury input in the system but it doesn’t mean that there is no impact it means that uh the impact is
Different if we if we think in term of mercury flues for instance it could be really more uh interesting because um by gold mining activities we generate more erosion and we release a lot of sediment in the system and if You observe a reserve in Guyana a river in Guyana you
Will see that all the sedimental Dynamics in river is completely Disturbed there is there is sediment transport that occurs in an area where it’s not supposed to occur so this will generate flues of mercury that are really high and we don’t know what are the consequences of that and this is not
Only thinking of input of liquid mercury is is important because we we we can have a a huge amount of no big flexes of mercury that are not really seen by those kind of tools and this is quite important in to to to think like that for for the river system
Here in Guyana because the the the sedimental Dynamics is completely completely Disturbed in Reverse so just to finish I will be quick on biological data so uh it changed completely now we we we use uh we measure mercury in human air so Human air are a biomarker of uh organic Mercury Exposition so
Basically um it’s due to diet fish diet mostly and uh the W wh limit is 10 milligram uh 10 PPM uh but over five we say that it start to be harmful for human health in the villages we we assess you see that Mia is a Mia cumon is the area where
There is less exposure to Mercury and we see that uh few people are over 10 PPM and most of them they are below five when we go to micobe it start to increase and we see that the proportion of people above 10 above five it’s it’s uh the main proportion and it’s it’s
Like that for T and gumu and F and what it mean is that uh the the further you leave from a town the less the more you rely on fren fresh water fish for your diet so karuma is the one with for instance with the highest level of mercury uh in the
Population and is the one which is the most remote and the people there rely a lot on fish this is not linked to gold mining activities it’s just uh a question of how you can diversify your food how you have access to to to a diversified diet and how much you rely
On fish to to eat so the conclusion that uh water are quite clean in Guyana in term of mercury low level below the drinking level that is recommended by wh uh there is no significant difference between pristin and un pristin areas in term of mercury concentration in
Sediment but also in water uh no liquid pollution at Regional River scale and the level of organic uh the level of exposure to organic Mercury is high as long as you live far away from a from a town so thank you for your attention and and sorry for the
Del all right thanks uh Dr Lo so the next um set of presenters I just want to warn that we have 10 minutes each and um I will give you when a little warning when you have two minutes left we’re just trying to keep everything tight in
Terms of time so up next we have miss relle boo and then we’ll have Bonita Davis right after that I hope you can see me I’m a bit short okay good day everyone my name is Russia boo BD chemistry and well good day to you all well my project that I did is
Based on Mercury contamination particularly in the pataro mining District now first of all the reason why I chose to do this experiment it has been known over the years that there has been an increase in heavy metals being released into the environment and this is due to mining activities one of those
Metals predominantly which we all here to investigate is mercury now we all know the description of mercury the one we’re used to is the metallic form of mercur Mercury which is Elemental Mercury we refer to as Quicksilver however Mercury can be in its organic form and its inorganic form the organic
Form is the one the Met form which is most dangerous and most toxic and the one we are most interested in right now so people in the aminian community have been exposed their livelihoods have been put at the risk because of mercury exposure they use running water for
Carrying out basic life hood and one of the this water has been put them as at risk elevated levels of meyle mercury can cause irreversible damage such as the reduction of their motor capacity harm to developing fetuses and breastfeeding children from all of the research that
We’ve heard so far there has been been ongoing research from people right here WWF ird and O ggmc and other organizations which have already proved that there has been high levels of mercury contamination particularly in here and Fishes large fishes only in 20122 samples were brought back to
Region 8 with Merc mercury levels in here that are higher than the prescribed levels most of them being above 1 PPM which it should be below some having even up to 20 PPM of mercury now it is known that artisanal and small scale goal mining accounts for about 70% of
The gold produced in Guyana now if there’s a rise in the gold output there’s obviously going to be a rise in the amount of mercury being released since we use mercury to extract Now what is my objective based on this information since I’m investigating water I want to determine the
Concentration of mercury in my river water samples collected in Region 8 I want to determine the concentration of mercury in some rainwater samples and I also wanted to determine if there’s any significant variation between the rainwater samples and river water samples collected in these location methodology now my project was
Supported by WWF and ird with the help of Mr Dr luck and Mr cevon Cameron the study area here was done mostly around in this cluster surrounded around Madia the areas where rain samples were taken from were directly in Madia and a rainwater sample was also taken from University of Guyana campus
For comparison to determine if there was any much different the river water samples were taken from along the pataro river at various points using coordinates and I structured them from Downstream to Upstream to determine the difference this is just a aerial view of the white hole mine where one of the
Water samples worth retrieved from now the stages of mercury analysis I can get into all the details of exactly how the scientific um research was done but samples were prepared sampling was done I told you the areas they were stored the samples were digested I prepared my standards
And blank to run it via atalan model Vapor generation accessory as Co Vapor as now one thing to note about about the sampling is that low-level Mercury samples are very susceptible to contamination and for this reason just like Dr luck would have explained we use pts bottles in order and we acidify them
To a pH Which is less than two I think it was 0 um 0 4% so that to minimize the loss of mercury I put my results in a in a table we had instrument concentrations however from my calculations we would have had the actual concentration for which the
Rainwater samples range from 0.03 to 0.19 micrograms per liter and R river water samples from 0.48 to 0.93 microgr per liter that is PPM now what we should know is that the maximum contaminant level of mercury that is stipulated by the EPA is 2 ppb or 2 micrograms per
Liter the accepted range however is six micrograms per liter by wh while the range for EU is below 1 microgram per liter from my experiment I use EPA maximum contaminant level and I did a simple bar graph which is easier to understand where the Blue Line represents the maximum contaminant level
Now from this table we can see that all of my sample results fell way below the range of the maximum contaminant level for mercury however it should be noted that detectable levels of mercury are hard to find in running water so from the time you can find detectable levels of
Mercury it shows some amount of contamination however it is nothing to be scared about so we can also notice a trend where Downstream has higher levels of mercury contamination than upstream and there will be a reason for this so I put it into a simple line graph to show
That there is downward progression meaning that there are higher levels of mercury Downstream the reason for this most of a lot of the mining is done Upstream however as you go down stream there is more accumulation of mercury or deposition so as you notice in the middle on the second sample which was
Taken by our coordinates it has slightly higher levels than our Upstream sample that’s because as mercury and water flows down a lot of it would have accumulated in sediments and downstream has more swampy areas more sediments Etc now here are the rainwater samples they were taken from white hole which is
Directly in one of the largest mines there hind farm and on the University of Guyana campus so we can see that the campus has the lowest level of mercury because in those areas there are higher levels of mercury Hein Farm tends to have more Mercury than white hole which
Might not have been expected while doing the experiment however this is due to throughfall and that is the fact that that is due to the water cycle so a lot of the mercury in the atmosphere which is released from burning amalgam Etc would have accumulated on leaves plants
Etc when the rainfalls a lot of those Mercury would have been picked up in the droplets of water which come in in their rainwater samples so we see a higher level of mercury in the farm than in the mine itself so one of the things I wanted to
Determine is if there were any significant variations between the rainwater samples and the river water sample from the results we can see clear variation however statistical analysis was done to prove this these are the results of the statistical analysis having a mean of 0.68 a observe mean difference of
0.53 and a probability of 0.035 now my hypothesis was that there is significant variation in the mean concentrations of mercury samples collected from River waterer samples and collected from rainwater samples the significance level was 0.05 and because my probability was less than that significant level I can reject the null
Hypothesis and prove that there is significant variation one of the limitations I had was that there was a limited amount of sample obtained which I would have preferred to have more amounts of samples to be able to compare but this this is due to Shared research and um
Limited sampling storage material at the time so a smaller sample size can give you a greater margin of error however the results are quite um cohesive so one of some of the things I recommend which some of them are probably already implemented would be routine and yearly
Checks and monitor the levels of mercury because the levers are low enough right now in the running surface waters to ensure safety to prevent a drastic rise in the um levels of mercury to be able to alert the indigenous communities of when the waters are not safe for their
Usage granting the indigenous communi full protection rights against their Waters and developing most of all total maximum daily loads which are the calculations of Maximum amounts of specific pollutants that a water body can receive and still safely meet the water quality standards that has brought me to the end
Of my presentation showing that all rainwater samples and river water samples that have been tested by myself with the help of Mr luck and Mr Cleon fall below the maximum contaminant level and can still be used by the indigenous [Applause] community well all protocols observe a pleasant
Good day to you all I’m Bonita Davis and my task this afternoon I think it’s afternoon is to present on my final year research is to present on my final year research which is entitled an examination of physical chemical water quality parameters for Rivers within the vicinity of kitra national park and this
Was done in collaboration with protected areas commission and ggmc so okay so why kitra National Park so kitra National Park is the home to the largest single drop waterfall in the world it’s approximately 700 hey it’s approximately 741 ft and it’s also a protected area because of its
High levels of endemism primarily the fish population of the upper patara river unfortunately in 2016 and 2017 we know no illegal go mining activities occurring within the buffer zone of the park so gtmc and the PAC came together and said you know they wanted research
To be done to really set up a baseline because like the slide shows there’s no comprehensive Baseline water quality data for kitra National Park So This research aims to set up set baselines so that future research can be compared to what was established here objectives my main objectives are
To determine the physical chemical parameters for water quality for four areas along the itak m and patara river and then to determine the concentration of mercury in water and sediment samples for pataro and Ichiro River and then finally to investigate what relationship exists between those physical chemical
Parameters as well as the total Mercury concentration so now this is a map of the sample s to the area in green sorry this is not my SL yeah so the area in green [Laughter] here shows the protected areas commission this this is skyro National Park
And yeah this is skyro National Park the area in yellow are the mining blocks okay thank you are the mining blocks and then we’ll see the sample Point yes so the area in green k Park here is the patara river this is the kitra falls and the green dots that you
See along are the sample points the yellow blocks are the mining camps that existed and so each Rock was measured and you see well in 2018 there were four active mining claims at the time not sure the state of the river now and this is a an indigenous community of chipa
That is nearby that River and this is just a clear visualization of my sample points before after the fall on this is the Mii RI and the other one is the ich Rock RI having a tough time so the method used for water samples first of all uh the Haw
Multiparameter meter was used to measure the water samples in situe so six parameters were analyzed then a depth sample was used to remove said water placed into a plastic bottle PTF Teflon acidified by 2 MLS of nitric acid stored at 4° and then transport it to the lab
It was analyzed using EPA method 14 ter one e 16 tur one sorry and then the method used with sediment samples so an egman grab was used to collect the sediment samples and the uppermost four the the upper clicking this I’m clicking to the yeah sorry about that so the method is
Sediment samples the ecan grabin in the upper 4 to5 cm was removed placed into a bowl and then the first two steps repeated to form a composite sample then that sample was subdivided into three parcels and Place into zp loog bags and Inter a cooler with ice at 4° C and
Transport it to the lab and transport it to the lab where EPA methods 350 to B and 16 to one for you standing okay results and discussion well I really can’t do the results discussion without the graph but what we found is that tability was quite high so although six parameters were
Analyzed the turbidity and pH were well above the international guidelines set by wh as well as US EPA and this confirmed with studies done in eastern Cameron as well as Surinam however they attributed their High turbidity values to artisanal gold mining but in this case the areas that had the highest
Turbidity were found in locations that were much far farther away from the gold mining activities so it’s more plausible to conclude that this High turbidity value is more linked to the bands of mudstone in the river bed so suspended particles because as the river rolls over the clay it suspends the particle
Increasing turbidity and this is Black Water we’re talking about so the tannins present which gives it that te color yes that person gives it that te color increases turbidity as well in terms of pH okay yeah so in terms of pH which is this graph here we see that they were
Generally acidic which is natural for blackw Rivers because of the tanic acid present however they were set to be high in PH simply because of the geological formation as well so the rocks that make up the kitri national park are acidic rocks so they Granite quartz and
Mudstone so the water flowing over them might also result in this acidic solution I was prom now objectives two total mercury in water all of the sample sites were well below International guidelines the however ich irck which had the four mining claims in 2018 were higher than pataro I cannot say that
That is because of the mining claim simply because there’s no Baseline I cannot compare it to anything however the values found were similar to naral who can conducted studies in the North District of Ghana and what they found or they attributed the low levels of mercury to is the natural occurrence of
Mercury in that area so it could be the case objective two yes TOA mercury in sediment this was also well below the international guidelines set and for our C Kyra National Park that you had the illegal mining you also have mining camps outside of this um protected area it was well below areas
Such as kesan as well as a other protected areas in Guyana that were studied in 20110 and said to be pristine at that point in time so kitra National Park was not influenced that much by go mining or mercury levels and it was also very pristine now total mercury in water
Versus turbidity based on this graph you see a similar Trend exists between total Mercury as as well as turbidity so we can say that there was a direct or positive relationship between the turbidity of the water as well as the total Mercury concentration so the higher the turbidity the higher the
Total Mercury concentration which confirms the study done by ubal in Camaroon and now here objective three We compare total Mercury for both ichira and peraro so with the exception of point 4 they were generally the same So based on observations it was noted that the sediments of Point 1 2 3 and five
Were sand particles while for point 4 it was Clay particles so we can clearly state or conclude that there’s an inverse relationship between particle size and total Mercury concentration so thein of the particles the higher the total Mercury and so in conclusion all physical chemical parameters were
Analyzed they were found to be safe based on who guidelines with the exception of pH and turbidity for total mercury in water as well as sediment it was well below International guidelines and so safe for both Aquatic and human environment and finally only a weak correl positive correlation existed
Between turbidity and total mering water and then in terms of mercury in sediment there was a an inverse relationship with particle size I do recommend that future research is conducted to have seasonal comparisons for This research it was done in the dry season so there need to
Be uh research done in the Water season so we can or the wet season so we can really see the changes in concentrations there also need to be research done in hair and tissue samples hair and fish sorry samples so that we can see how it impacts the human life because there is
A community of chinapa that is nearby this region and finally I hope that a baseline water quality data can be set up using this research so that future research can be used to properly monitor the kitri National Park thank you very much all right okay can I have the three
Presenters um on stage as well again thank you so we’ll have a a short question and answer segment and I want to note that uh Miss Boo’s um work her Mercury analysis was done right here at the University of Guyana she only did it this year um so just to knowe that we
We have the capacity to do it at ug all right so yes we’ll take some questions from the audience good morning uh Johan Waldron from the GH Wild Life conservation management Commission uh congratulations on the presentations they were well done and I have a question for miss boo um as part of
Recommendations I’m just wondering if cyanide was considered as a potential replacement or substitute for Mercury in these areas to potentially help reduce the concentrations and contamination levels that you encounter it okay so by myself definite cyanide was not considered but based on the research that I’ve done I read a few and nobody
Mentioned cyanide as um being considered and I think one of the reasons is because cyanide is also quite dangerous so there are many risks that will come up in terms of using Cyanide and plus Mercury right now is one of the most effective and most affordable methods
Being um used for small go mining so it would be difficult to change so cyanide is used in the larger scale um uh mines um but as Rochelle said for the small scale Min there a bit of an adaptability for them and then there a lot of you need a chemist
Probably on site so I don’t know if yeah I know some of our colleagues actually we have sitting in our audience there desan and um yeah will be able to speak to some of that as well so thank you yes so um my name is sha Tom I’m the a mineral
Processing engineer from Guyana geology and mins commission um site is permitted for use by large scale miners but not by small scale miners basically because um small scale miners it would require more um technical um Personnel for them to store and use the cyanides also we have social
Problems with sanite as a country and um we should know that as gyes um we had the jam Jones story and we also um have um persons we don’t want persons um use it as a poison so to speak socially to harm others there’s also a consideration or even themselves with
Suicide in Guyana um so s requires a permit and is used um by large scale miners sin is also um I heard my colleague say it’s dangerous it’s but it’s um a preferable method to Mercury because cyanide can be broken down into its components which because it’s a
Compound but Mercury cannot be further broken down into any other thing because it’s just an element so um that makes it a bit more environmentally friendly to be used um than Mercury right okay that’s about it if I may add uh there is anation in artisanal small scale mining it’s a it’s
It’s a technique that is used in Western Africa in Burkina Faso and Nigeria for instance and also in Surinam in Surinam in the brokopondo area and also in the in Maroni River there is artisanal small scale miners who use idation as a techniques basically they they take the the waste from the merury
Process and they use sination to recover the the 50% that remain in the mining waste to to get the the remaining gold so in seram it’s a technique that is widely used now in small scale mining just to add to that um site can also be um broken down by sunlight so
That that also adds to the environmental friendly part of it Willam wford representing the miners Association I just want to put some information out here because we just talked about the pataro Basin and we talked about M early we talked about my Kobe early and we talked about it in relation
To the small scale miners but historically a huge set of large scale operations were conducted in the M River and over the watered at the other part the uh minihaha River and then down further the Conor River from sorts all the way down to Long Falls and in chumari area on the batara
River huge dredges were operating for dozens of years and it’s interesting that all of that took place and I have never found any significant information that said that residents and so on were badly affected by Mery poisoning I I am still scratching my head on it
Because the Mia River itself you go to Maria there’s a Maria River and there was a dredge above the fall there’s a small Falls in Maria River and below the falls and when we did work there as geia Minds commission looking at the outflow from the M River into the potaro you hardly
Found anything so I think we should focus some studies on and what’s happening is that is that mercury and in in the in the 1980s I was examining a dredge operation a local dredge operation in the patara river about 4 mil down from my Kobe and the guys pulled up and in the loose box there was a glob Duel of amalgam gold with Mery in it they they they they
Didn’t put it there they pulled it up from the patara river bed how you saw it so I am interested in some studies on on is there something going on Where the mercury is Amalgamated and some place below there and it’s not moving or whatever it is but the major
Work with Mercury in the pataro area are and so on was done by large scale bucket line dredges that operated for dozens of years the last one operated in 1959 right by the chumari falls where they have that uh hydroelectric plant so I would ask that we recognize
Small scale guys doing a little mercury but try to figure out why we haven’t had any systematic research done as to why you have big bucket line Drees using more crous loose box operated for dozens of years and we can’t seem to figure out where the Mary
Went and the other thing is that one of the presenters mentioned the fact that the uh geology of the area makes a difference as well what is happen happening in the pataro area along Maria along Carnival Rook is that there’s a set of material called quartz Pebble conglomerates it’s
A sandstones and conglomerate those quartz Pebble conglomerates are known internationally and Guyana is classified Brazil uh Johannesburg area and in um Eliot Lake uh Ontario they’re known to carry certain things including gold and uranium but one of the trace metals that they always identified is mercury so you
Would expect that the quart SP conglomerates that barara River uh Cano River and so on would be giving out something as it break down and so on so I’m interested in forther studies done in these years thank you very much am Tom again from ggmc I must commend
The um presenters for the work they did um I really um commend them for the results also that were brought forth here today um also I’d like to see the university as Mr Wolford rightly said doing um work on Where the mercury goes because Mercury is not solid um soluble in water so
Um something happens to the Mercury and Miss Davis rightly mentioned that in her studies where there were final particles she found more Mercury there because of the um I guess because of the suspended solids that would be where final particles exist more than where a Sandy
Sample would be there would be less susp suspended solids but that does not necessarily go to say that that area has less Mercury than a um Sil or clay area so we need to study um Where the mercury goes and probably um do sampling on River beds or something of the sort thank
You so just to to jump on the to to comment it’s uh the Mercury cycle is quite complex when it’s in mining areas when you do Mining and you use liquid mercury it’s Mercury zero it’s on the liquid form it’s an heavy metal so of course when
It’s on its form it’s heavy it won’t travel far away from the mining site because uh you know when you put a solid in a water the easier it is the quicker it sorry the quicker it will go down to the bottom of of the glass for instance
The same when you you you you think of the sediment transport in a river but even if there is a liquid mercury in a sediment deposited in a sediment after some times it will come Mercury with two this one is a reactive form and it it
Can be uh trapped on carbon that is dissolved in the river it could be trapped uh on fine particles which are really reactive so then it can be transport further away from the mining side what is tricky with uh Mercury cycle in gold mining area is that
Also we have in Guyana in the Gyan Shield the river are quite low in sediment loads because the shield is old and there is no more uh withering no more erosion so mining activities they are uh creating a new Dynamic by uh create creating more erosion and new
Sediment transport and sometimes if you will you erod a soil you have the geogenic signal of mercury it’s let’s say natural Mercury but it will be transported and sometimes it can um when we do a sampling if you have 50 cm of soil uh erated by mining
Activities you won’t catch the what is below that and you won’t catch for instance old liquid mercury that could be accumulated there due to all Dres activities or so on and and it’s really difficult also because uh sediment transport is a is a is a way of research
By itself and and in the case of a of a river when you have low and eye flow during low ey flow some uh it’s like like in your toilet when you flush it you know you have some uh sediment accumulated in one area and one year
Before it could be after it could be in another area because it it has been Flushed Away by the water so um in in term of mercury cycle in mining areas we need to think about the the sediment fluxes and how it’s evolved due to mining activities and not fighting
Liquid mercury doesn’t mean that there is no uh mer I won’t say pollution because the pollution means that there is an increase of the geic background but it doesn’t mean that there is no more Mercury fluxes or there is no impact on the river because you you you
Change the sediment uh Dynamics you can increase the the fluxes of mercury because if you uh reject more sediment okay there is less Mercury concentration in those sediment but at the end there is a lot of sediment compared to what you will have in a natural way so there
Is more mercury in term of mass in your system you know so just looking at Mercury concentration sometimes it’s not enough and and and Mining activities as I said before they they really increase and change the the the natural Dynamic of a river and this this
Is damaging and this this also has a huge impact on the merary cycle and we cannot just just think in term of liquid mercury because yes it’s it’s harmful it’s dangerous it’s po it’s a pollutant but what happen when you have a a huge mass of mercury natural Mercury coming
In an area where there is uh floating for instance in this area you will have a change of inorganic Mercury to organic Mercury and as we presented during those uh talks organic Mercury is a dangerous form yeah I finished and and this this this also we don’t what happened it’s a
Natural it’s a human process because we change the dynamic but we can increase the rate of met Mercury creation and what happened to the food chain this is the question that remain for mining activities um thank you just a quick one I couldn’t um being a member the chemistry Department um allow that
Statement to run um with respect to the research um it’s a good idea coming from uh Mr Wilford as well as from the the ggmc right um and Miss St right um what what um the whole idea now is that before we didn’t have the capability to
Do this kind of um analysis in house we now have it so maybe we should um also with WWF and so we can look at that those kind of things and it’s easy to set up projects for various students and work around and those kind of things so
It’s open let us discuss it thank you open for collaboration and especially um logistical assistance we know we always get support but yeah definitely so I just wanted to flag uh on the same line that uh if you note part of what we’re trying to do in this
Is to come up with things that we may be able to collaborate on uh what what are the priorities so I want to keep the same kind of thought as we go into other sessions and um particularly tomorrow morning when we’ll have so this is a plug to encourage everybody that’s here
To come back out tomorrow morning for us to have that discourse yeah and I think um you might eventually see in some of the other presentations Where the mercury ends up so Lo gave you a very chemistry description but in some of the presentations to come this afternoon
You’re going to see where it actually ends up or maybe in the fishes or you know um so that’s yeah all in all though um I want to commend our presenters today for all of their really hard work and all of the significant findings and guys keep it going we can only get
Make it better from here so we’re going to take um here half hour hour f