Ipan, 16 months old, suffers a seizure as his
mother, Fatimah, looks on.
Both his parents, who live in Sekotong, Indonesia,
were gold miners who used mercury to process gold. Doctors say Ipan probably
suffered mercury poisoning while in the womb.
Thin and frail, he is unable to
walk, talk or grasp objects.
Photograph by Larry C. Price
More than
a million small-scale miners in this island nation are poisoned, which is
leaving children with crippling birth defects.
SEKOTONG,
INDONESIAIpan is 16 months old and suffering his third seizure of the morning.
His head is too large for his body, and his legs are as thin as sticks. He
arches his back, and his limbs stiffen. He cries out in pain.
His
mother, Fatimah, tries to comfort Ipan, but there’s not much she can do. A
dukun, or shaman, says his soul was invaded by the spirits of the monkey, bat,
and octopus. On his advice, Fatimah and her husband, Nursah, changed the boy's
name from Iqbal to Ipan and fed him tiny rice balls mixed with octopus.
“The
dukun says this is why Ipan’s legs look like a monkey’s legs,” Nursah says.
“Actually, I don’t believe that, but I will try anything.”
Doctors say
the real culprit is more down-to-earth: mercury poisoning. His parents are
small-scale miners who used the heavy metal to process gold for years before
Ipan was born, including while Fatimah was pregnant.
Millions
of people in 70 countries across Asia, Africa, and South America have been
exposed to high levels of mercury as small-scale mining has proliferated over
the past decade. The United Nations Environment Programme estimates that at
least 10 million miners, including at least four million women and children,
are working in small “artisanal” gold mines, which produce as much as 15
percent of the world’s gold.
More than
a million miners scratch out an illegal living digging for gold in at least 850
hot spots, says Yuyun Ismawati, a 2009 winner of the Goldman Environmental
Prize who has conducted extensive research on small-scale mining. Many of them
fall prey to corrupt authorities who take a share of the gold rather than
enforcing a law that bans mercury use.
Indonesia,
an archipelago of 17,500 islands with the world’s fourth largest population,
has one of the worst mercury problems, according to Stephan Bose-O'Reilly, a
children’s health expert who volunteers at the Indonesian environmental group
BaliFokus Foundation.
"Indonesia
is a real global hot spot," Bose-O’Reilly said during a recent trip to
Indonesia examine miners in the gold fields. “I haven’t seen anything worse
than here."
Ipan is
one of at least 46 suspected victims of mercury poisoning identified by doctors
in impoverished southwestern Lombok, a tourist island next to Bali. Another 131
people with mercury poisoning have been found on the islands of Java, Lombok,
and Sulawesi, according to Ismawati.
Many more
victims likely remain undiscovered in remote villages across Indonesia.
Nationwide, Ismawati estimates that 100,000 to 200,000 people are suffering
from mercury poisoning and another 10,000 to 20,000 children have birth defects
from exposure in the womb.
A miner in Padanbila, a
village in Indonesia, pours a pan of mercury into a smaller container. In
Indonesia, use of mercury has been banned since 2014. But it remains in
widespread use by small-scale mining operations throughout the country.
Some of
the miners heat mercury in their kitchens, where the vapors can reach
concentrations that are quadruple the amounts considered safe under World
Health Organization standards.
High
doses of mercury, which is a neurological poison, are a well-documented cause
of birth defects, including crippling deformities and nervous system disorders.
The most notorious episode of mercury poisoning occurred in Japan in the 1950s
when a factory dumped the heavy metal into Minamata Bay. More than 2,000 people
were poisoned by the bay’s seafood, killing some, and dozens of children
suffered severe birth defects.
In
Indonesia, child labor is common in the gold fields, with boys as young as
eight digging the ore and as young as 12 burning the mercury-gold amalgam.
Mujiburrahman,
14, who lives in the West Lombok village of Luang Baluk, says he began torching
mercury two years ago. “I burn the amalgam two or three times a week,” he says.
“I never wear protective clothing.” The smoke, he says, simply “disappears.”
Doctors have
identified 24 children in mining villages in the Sekotong district in
southwestern West Lombok with birth defects or ailments caused by mercury.
Among
them is Lailatul Azwa, who was born in September without a left hand. Like
Ipan, she suffers frequent seizures.
Six-year-old
Aida was born with deformed fingers on both hands.
Nyimas,
who suffered from an enlarged skull and other serious deformities, died earlier
this year at the age of eight. She was in a near-vegetative state all her life.
A villager heats a gold
nugget in Cisitu, a village in Banten Province, Indonesia. In this village,
leaders estimate that one-third of the households operate illegal, backyard
gold mining shops known as "ball mills," which use mercury, a
powerful neurotoxin.
“Mercury
vapor is very toxic to the brain, especially during development, and exposures
may therefore be detrimental to pregnant women and small children,” says
Harvard environmental health professor Philippe Grandjean, one of the world’s
leading experts on the effects of mercury exposure.
Indonesia’s Gold Rush
Small-scale
gold mining began to take hold in Indonesia after the 1998 fall of Suharto, its
longtime military ruler, and has flourished in an ensuing era of lax
governance. Nearly all artisanal miners use mercury to extract gold, even
though the practice has been banned by the government since 2014.
Indonesia’s
small-scale miners produce five billion dollars in gold a year, according to
Atmadji Sumarkidjo, special assistant to Luhut Pandjaitan, coordinating
minister for security and political affairs. That’s about 7 percent of the
country's total gold production. Indonesia's gross domestic product was about
$873 billion in 2015.
Miners
have released hundreds of tons of mercury into the water, soil, and air, often
in poor, remote areas, contaminating food and wildlife. In some villages,
families use mercury-laced mine waste as the foundation for their homes or to
surface their yards and walkways.
In the
central Java regency of Wonogiri, where small-scale gold miners have operated
for more than 15 years, residents were alarmed two years ago when the local
environmental agency tested guavas, cassavas, papayas, and bananas grown in the
area and found them to be highly contaminated with mercury.
“Children
in the mining areas have been exposed to mercury since they were in the womb,
and some are born with deformities,” Ismawati says. “When they grow up, they
inhale contaminated air, drink contaminated water, and eat contaminated rice.”
Miners
flock to newly discovered gold fields in Indonesia, often in national parks or
on other public land, where they operate without required permits. They dig
deep mine shafts, dredge rivers, destroy forests, and poison the environment.
Stephan Bose-O'Reilly,
a pediatrician and environmental health expert, examines two-year-old Rifky
Aldiansyah, who lives in the village of Cisitu, for symptoms of mercury
poisoning. Rifky was in good health until his third month when he began losing
motor control. Rifky's mother, right, who lived in Cisungsang, a nearby mining
community, said her home there was surrounded by gold processing centers.
Mercury poisoning is “a serious health problem” for children in Indonesia,
Bose-O'Reilly says.
Noisy
tumblers known as ball mills operate almost continually in mining communities,
often next to homes, grinding the ore along with mercury and water to extract
the gold. As the tumblers rattle and spin, the rock breaks down and flecks of
gold bind to the mercury. Afterwards, the miners drain off the liquid and
recover some excess mercury, but much of it becomes vapor and pollutes the air
or flows onto the ground and into waterways.
In the
final stage of extracting the gold, the miners typically heat their mercury and
gold with a blowtorch, sending poisonous mercury vapors into the air. Inhaling
the vapors produced by burning the amalgam is the most dangerous form of
exposure, doctors say.
Cooking Mercury
Karto
Paimin, 67, lives with his family in the placid hills of Wonogiri in a wooden,
Javanese-style house with a high peaked roof and a large living area. The
family has tunneled about 50 feet into the hillside below the house to find
ore, which they process with mercury in their ball mill in the garden.
After
many hours of labor, Paimin has produced a small lump of mercury and gold,
which he takes to the kitchen at the far end of the house. The room has a dirt
floor, woven bamboo walls and a rudimentary woodstove with no chimney. Two
large pots of soup simmer on the fire at midafternoon.
Paimin
brings out a piece of pipe, which is about 18 inches long and closed at one
end. He slips the mercury-gold amalgam into the sealed end of the pipe and
places it in the fire. He rests the other end of the pipe in a small dish of
water on the floor. His daughter, Yuni, 33, and grandson, Galang, 9, squat
nearby to watch.
As the
pipe heats up, the mercury melts and most of it flows into the dish. But some
evaporates, and the fumes escape into the room.
Krishna
Zaki, of the group BaliFokus, has lugged a portable vapor analyzer into the
kitchen and tests the air. He detects about 4,000 nanograms of mercury per
cubic meter, four times the World Health Organization’s safety threshold of
1,000.
Ismawati
immediately tells the family members that the air in the kitchen is unsafe, so
they should all go outside. But none of them—including the child—heed her
advice.
When the
process is complete, Paimin retrieves a hot two-gram pellet of gold, which he
can sell for the equivalent of about $75.
Outside,
Paimin’s wife, Dinah, 55, has been complaining of headaches and difficulty
breathing. Ismawati gives her simple coordination tests, including touching her
nose with her finger and moving her wrists simultaneously. She does poorly, and
Ismawati recommends she get tested for mercury exposure. Dinah is shocked. She
and her husband had no idea mercury was harmful.
“Now I know,”
Paimin laments. “But before today I didn’t know, and I cooked the mercury in
the kitchen.”
Inside a bamboo hut in
Rau-Rau, a small girl named Dita lies rigid on the bare bamboo-slat floor. The
girl's bone-thin legs convulse, drawing up, then stretching out reflexively.
Her feet are pointed and trembling. Dita is a victim of neurological and
physical abnormalities that afflict people in parts of Sulawesi where
small-scale gold mining is common. Her mother, Kustin, 43, says Dita was a
normal little girl until she was about 3 years old. Then she began to have
trouble walking, and suffered seizures. Doctors couldn't figure out what was
wrong with Dita, and, her mother said, offered nothing to help her. When Dita
was 7, her symptoms suddenly worsened. She lost control of her arms and legs.
Her limbs contorted and became rigid. Her hands and fingers curled shut. She
stopped talking. And still no one, Kustin says, knew what was wrong with her
daughter.
Doctors say these symptoms are associated with exposure to mercury.
They suspect that she suffered mercury intoxication after she was born. She
died in August.
Since
Roman times, when slaves worked the cinnabar mines, mercury has been known to
cause a wide range of symptoms, including headaches, tremors, drooling,
difficulty walking, and eventually, death. But mercury poisoning can be
difficult to diagnose because it has many symptoms in common with other
ailments.
The
extent of mercury-related health problems in Indonesia is only now emerging as
BaliFokus, volunteer doctors, and a few government officials search out victims
and test for mercury in the air, food, homes, and water.
Erick
Gunawan, a public health service doctor in Sekotong on Lombok island, has held
two screenings in mining communities with BaliFokus’s help and found dozens of
potential mercury victims. He believes there are many more who have been
poisoned and hopes to hold more screenings.
“It’s
like an iceberg,” he says. “You only see what’s on top but you can’t see what’s
below.”
Claims of Extortion
The
slow-growing environmental disaster has begun to attract attention from top
officials in the administration of President Joko Widodo.
Coordinating
minister Pandjaitan cited illegal mining last year as one of the security
challenges facing the country. Sumarkidjo, his aide, says the minister was
referring in part to the illegal miners who destroy the environment and spread
mercury in their communities.
He says
the minister was particularly concerned by the rapid destruction and widespread
use of mercury by miners on remote Buru Island, the site of a former prison in
the Moluccas Islands where a gold rush has drawn many thousands of miners since
2012.
“It’s not
small-scale when you look at Buru Island,” he says. “It will take years to
clean up the mercury.”
Gatot
Sugiharto, founder of the Indonesian People’s Mining Association, says miners
are forced to give as much as half their earnings to corrupt police and
soldiers who control access to mining areas and demand payment. He alleges that
billions of dollars go into the pockets of officials who should be enforcing
the law against using mercury.
“The
miners lose about 50 percent of their product to pay the extortion,” he says.
“Sometimes police take it all.”
Sumarkidjo
agrees that the miners’ illegal status makes them vulnerable to extortion and
acknowledged that the police and military take a significant share.
“Our
office does not have proof of how much they take,” the minister’s aide says.
“But you can’t do these illegal things without the understanding of the
authorities— the police and the local military. Everyone takes the opportunity
to take something.”
Sugiharto,
a former miner himself, advocates legalizing the small-scale miners because it
is the only way to end mercury use. Operating outside the law means the miners
pay no taxes, depriving the government of much-needed revenue. If they were
legal, he says, the government could teach them methods that do not use
mercury, regulate their activities, and collect taxes to pay for health care,
mercury cleanup, and land rehabilitation.
“Being
illegal, all activity is uncontrolled,” he says. “They use mercury inside their
houses, hiding from the public or from the officers. It’s very, very dangerous
because sometimes they burn the mercury in the kitchen or in their rooms.”
Global Action
The
extent of mercury contamination around the globe has prompted international
action. In 2013, 128 nations signed the Minamata Convention on Mercury, which
aims to limit the trade and use of mercury worldwide.
The UN
agreement doesn't ban mercury in small-scale gold mining but requires
signatories to take steps to reduce its use and eliminate it "where
feasible." Countries are required to draft detailed action plans for
eliminating amalgam burning and educating the public on mercury's dangers,
among other steps.
Indonesia
signed the pact but is not among the 25 countries, such as the United States,
that have ratified it so far. It will take effect once 50 nations ratify it.
Tuti
Hendrawati Mintarsih, director general of hazardous waste in Indonesia’s
Ministry of Environment and Forestry, says her agency is developing the country's
action plan. But in tackling the mercury problem, she says the government is
hampered by overlapping jurisdictions and a lack of funds to locate victims,
provide care, and clean up contamination.
In the
meantime, mining continues uninterrupted.
Resti
Fauzia, age two, has never spoken a word. She stopped walking at 18 months,
says her mother, Ocih. She can’t grasp objects or stand without help. When she
sleeps, she has seizures.
Her
family lives in the village of Pangkal Jaya, near Pongkor Mountain, about 60
miles southwest of Jakarta. Illegal miners have been digging for gold there
since at least 2000. More than 10,000 miners work there today.
For 15
years, Resti's family has operated a ball mill just outside the kitchen door.
Volunteer doctors working with BaliFokus examined the girl and concluded she
was suffering from mercury poisoning.
On the
day the medical team examined her, mercury levels outside the kitchen measured
20 times higher than the WHO safety threshold.
“No one
ever told us that mercury is dangerous,” Ocih says.
Richard
C. Paddock
This
story was produced in collaboration with the Pulitzer Center on Crisis
Reporting.
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