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Across Myanmar, artisanal miners hunt for gold flecks in rivers and pit mines. The work is physically taxing and the income meagre. For many, the sprinkling of particles they find will only offer a few extra dollars of daily income.

It is also dangerous. Mercury is widely used to recover small pieces of gold in soil and sediment – it combines with the gold to form an amalgam that is more easily extracted. But the mercury is poisonous. Miners can inhale vapor from mercury burning or ingest the heavy metal as they eat fish contaminated with mercury runoff. Adverse effects from exposure including kidney and autoimmune dysfunction, and neurological deterioration.

An estimated 173,375 people work in Myanmar’s artisanal and small-scale gold mining sector, with actual figures likely to be higher. The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) has been working with the Government of Myanmar to reduce the impact of mercury on artisanal miners. Part of this support is building Myanmar’s capacity to ratify and implement the Minamata Convention on Mercury, a multilateral environmental agreement that aims to protect human health and the environment from anthropogenic emissions and releases of mercury and mercury compounds.