Gold; The True Cost of a Global Obsession

The next time you buy a gold necklace think about this: In all of history only 161,000 tons of gold have ever been mined, barely enough to fill two Olympic pools and more than half of that has been extracted in the past 50 years. For centuries gold has captivated and lured peoples from all cultures around the globe. Captivated by it's easy malleability, rarity and beautiful sparkling color. But today as the precious metal is getting harder and harder to find, big and small miners alike are willing to suffer greater risks to get it. The global demand for it is enormous with 2,398.7 tons of it going just to jewelry use, the largest consumer of gold. But as the demand grows so does the environmental and human suffering it takes to mine it. Small scale mining account for 25% of the worlds extracted gold. These poor miners faced deadly effects to their health, the often use mercury to separate the gold from the rock in liquid and gas forms which create toxic fumes and poisons their water. These miners often travel into extreme danger, by way of explosions, collapsing mines and exhaustion. Their families are also affected, many of their children and wives work just outside the mines crushing excess rock to extract any remaining gold all to make just a meager living. This article was very long, there are countless people effected and destroyed by the world's hunger for gold. Diamonds and other precious stones also cause a lot of havoc around the world. Displacing people, extreme environmental damage, destroyed communities and families as well as extreme wastes. Gold mining is more wasteful than any other metal, a single ounce of gold- the amount in a typical wedding ring- requires the removal of more than 250 tons of rock and ore. The gashes in the earth are so massive they can be seen from space yet the particles being mined in them are so microscopic that in many cases, more than 200 could fit on the head of a pin. The story of gold is amazing, after reading this article I will never walk by a jewelery store without a thought of an Indonesian family whose children are pulled from school to work next to their parents in the mines and the babies who die there because their mothers drink toxic watter with mercury in it from the mining activities that meagerly supports their families.
Larmer, Brook. "The Price of Gold." National Geographic Jan. 2008: 34-61.