Word: manado
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Dates: during 2001-2001
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...Afterward, Femmy didn't want to talk about it. People in her village, most of whom also work in processing units or mines, didn't want to know about the dangers. They were poor, and the gold brought money and jobs. So, day and night, in the hills above Manado, capital of Indonesia's North Sulawesi province, you can hear the noise from the processing units, the ore and water and stones and mercury sloshing and banging in steel barrels, the roar of the diesel motors turning the long lines of drums...
...Even if you take the lowest estimates, it would be absolutely devastating," says Ed Pressman, who works for the American mining giant Newmont, which operates a mine 100 km south of Manado. "It's one of the great, unrecognized environmental disasters of our time." Then Pressman mentions a name that has been burned into the world's consciousness along with Bhopal and Chernobyl: Minamata...
...Children were born with deformities, the images of their arched, agonized bodies a perpetual reminder of the black underside of the 20th century's industrial triumphalism. That tragedy, Pressman points out, was the product of 27 tons of mercury over 40 years. "Imagine what these amounts could do in Manado...
...deformities, many of the workers say that after educational campaigns by NGOs and the local government, they now know mercury can harm them. But the risk is more than offset by the high wages?nearly $50 a month, or double what they could make from a menial job in Manado, and far better than the erratic pittance that farmers make. Michael Andoh, 20, who works at a processing unit 5 km from the main mining area, has already been diagnosed as contaminated by mercury. That doesn't faze him. "I'm not scared because I need the money," he says...