The invisible evil

(Mercury poisoning in Indonesia)

Minamata’s disease is caused by chronic mercury poisoning.
This metal, used in hundreds of illegal gold mines in the forests of Indonesia, is contaminating the environment: That is why it would be incomplete to talk about mercury poisoning without also documenting the world of illegal gold mining.
To be able to amalgamate the gold powder, during the phase of separation from the stone and from the earth residues, mercury is used (rarely cyanide): the process, however, releases toxic substances in liquid and gaseous form, poisoning the miners themselves and polluting the environment and the aquifers.
Miners, who have worked for years in contact with mercury, have developed neurological degenerative diseases.
But the spillage of gold mining waste has contaminated also the aquifers upstream: the villages downstream from the mines, have for years used water with mercury for domestic use and to irrigate crops.
For this project I travelled several time (since 2015 until 2023) in Java and Lombok`s islands: communities lives far from big cities and people are usually introverted and shy to show their problems.
On West Java, just in the village of Cisitu, dozens people have these kind of diseases. Pregnant women have passed mercury to the fetus without their knowledge, causing irreversible damage to the unborn child with morphological and anatomical abnormalities.
The syndrome is manifested by neurological problems, difficulty in movement, muscle weakness, visual, auditory and cognitive deficits, hydrocephaly. Paralysis or coma can also occur until death.
In the city of Semarang, Central region, a foundation helps cases of children with hydrocephaly caused by mercury pollution.
UNIDO, the United Nations Organization for Industrial Development, has estimated that one third of all mercury released by man into the environment comes from artisanal gold mining.