Read the New Report About Mercury from Nevada Mines

Great Basin Mine Watch has posted the new report about mercury releases from Nevada gold mines.

Lisa Mascaro did an excellent overview in the Sun yesterday despite the obligatory commentary from the Nevada Mining Association, Death Watch Division.

Breath deep, denizens of Gibbons’ Country:

At three of the 10 mines
tested, airborne mercury was at or below the level that occurs
naturally in the environment – about 5 nanograms per cubic meter.

At four others, the levels were at least several times higher than
the 5-nanogram mark. Near active leech heaps, which are not measured
under the state program, researchers found levels as high as 60
nanograms.

At three other mines, the levels were sharply higher.   

More than a mile away from Newmont Mining’s Twin Creeks mine, the
readings showed mercury at nearly 700 nanograms – double the federal
limits for toxic exposure.

At a parking lot outside Coeur’s Rochester mine, mercury was recorded at 2,326 nanograms.   

A parking lot at Glamis Gold’s Marigold mine registered 3,139 nanograms.   

Mike Abbot, a mercury air emissions expert at the U.S. government’s
Idaho National Lab, said that mercury readings of between 2,000 and
4,000 nanograms, taken near one of the nation’s remaining chlor-alkali
plants in Louisiana, are among the highest recorded in the United
States.

He said a high reading would be "any time you get over 1,000." In
his field work, where he measures mercury pollution that is falling on
rural Idaho, the most he has ever measured is 160.