The gold was extracted while the mercury was left behind. A century ago, it was common for miners in Nome to use mercury to recover gold. Modern miners may be putting themselves at risk by trying to recover gold from mercury-heavy sediments on the sea floor, said Ali Hamade, a state environmental public health manager. The Bering Sea port town of Nome has been a magnet this summer for gold prospectors, some of them with little experience, in a boom that state officials attribute in part to publicity from Discovery Channel’s reality TV show “Bering Sea Gold” and other mining shows set in Alaska.
ANCHORAGE, Alaska (Reuters) - Alaska health officials, concerned about amateur miners seeking riches in a modern-day mini gold rush, plan to test prospectors in the town of Nome for mercury exposure for fear that archaic mining techniques may be inadvertently harming their bodies.
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