Peru's deadly gold mining conflicts test leaders 
 
 Lima (AFP) - Both candidates running for president of Peru have vowed to create jobs and wealth. In a land of gold and copper, that means tackling deadly disputes over mining. 
 
 US companies such as gold miner Newmont and Southern Copper are busy extracting minerals from the Peruvian Andes, helping the economy outperform many of its neighbors. 
 
 But such projects have sparked deadly protests by locals in rural areas who say the mining damages the environment. 
 
 That has put the two right-of-center candidates in Sunday's presidential runoff vote in a bind. 
 
 Frontrunner Keiko Fujimori, the 41-year-old daughter of jailed former president Alberto Fujimori, has vowed to improve life for poor rural communities. 
 
 Her opponent, former banker and mining executive Pedro Pablo Kuczynski, has made similar promises. 
 
 But both have also vowed to invest in the country's mines, one of its biggest assets, accounting for 10 percent of the economy. 
 
 In doing so, they risk the mistrust of voters. 
 
 "We don't expect anything from either candidate, since they both defend the current model," said Wilfredo Saavedra, president of the Environmental Defense Front in the northern mining city of Cajamarca. 
 
 "Whoever governs the country must respect the popular will: no to mining near the heads of rivers, no to open-cast mining and yes to protection of the ecosystem." 
 
 - Mercury poisoning - 
 
 In recent years protests have forced the suspension of various copper, gold and silver mining projects, according to the Peruvian Economic Institute, a non-profit development group. 
 
 The investment in those projects is valued at $21.5 million overall, the group says. 
 
 Civilians have been killed in clashes with police at protests, including actions against mining by Newmont and Southern Copper. 
 
 The state ombudsman says 69 people have been killed in such protests since 2011. 
 
 Meanwhile unregulated mining activities are poisoning local villages. 
 
 The government declared an environmental emergency last month in 11 Amazon jungle districts where mercury pollution blamed on unregulated gold mining poisoned people and fish. 
 
 Carlos Galvez, president of the National Mining Society, complains of a "double standard." 
 
 "Legal operations with environmental precautions are not being permitted, while there are a lot of people involved in illegal mining in prohibited areas," he told AFP. 
 
 "The new government must show leadership to convince the population of the necessity to move forward with mining projects that ensure financing for the growth of the country and to reduce poverty." 
 
 The outgoing government of Ollanta Humala has cracked down in illegal miners, destroying their equipment. 
 
 The two candidates to replace him have put more emphasis on "formalizing" the unregulated mining sector in order to reap the profits from it. 
 
 Kuczynski and Fujimori have promised to protect the environment and invest in improving basic services in rural communities before launching mining projects in them. 
 
 "Both candidates support the mining sector. But the outlook for new projects is not good," said Maria Luisa Puig, a Peruvian analyst at the Eurasia Group consultancy. 
 
 "This is a period of low prices and the existing social conflicts are not easy to resolve." ||||| Dan Collyns/AFP/Getty Images 
 
 Long-running concerns about the environmental effects of gold-mining in the Peruvian Amazon came to a head last week. Peru’s government declared a 60-day public-health emergency on 23 May in an attempt to address the problem of mercury pollution caused by unregulated gold-mining along the Madre de Dios River. 
 
 Health-care and emergency workers will this week begin providing medical and food aid for 25 affected villages, after a flurry of studies showed high levels of mercury in people, fish and sediments in the Madre de Dios region. The government estimates that some 48,000 people across 85,301 square kilometres have been affected. 
 
 “We now know with certainty what the source of the exposure is,” says Peru’s deputy health minister, Percy Minaya. “We are not going to solve this in two months, or even in a year, but the Health Ministry has to start.” Symptoms of mercury poisoning include vomiting and diarrhoea. Extreme cases can lead to brain or kidney damage. 
 
 The Madre de Dios region has a long history of small-scale alluvial gold-mining, but the rise in international gold prices in the past decade has brought a boom in the activity. Peru’s National Institute of Statistics and Information in Lima reported on 23 May that gold production for March in Madre de Dios was 1,583 kilograms, up 28% from the same month last year. 
 
 The region’s miners extract the gold by sluicing sediment to separate gold-bearing sand, which they then mix with mercury to form an amalgamated lump of metal. Heating the lump vaporizes the mercury, leaving pure gold behind. The process sends an estimated 30–40 tonnes of mercury each year into waterways, where bacteria convert the metal into methylmercury. The methylmercury accumulates in fish, which are a key source of food for people in the Madre de Dios region. 
 
 Body burden 
 
 Perhaps unsurprisingly, researchers at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina, found high levels of mercury (above the maximum recommended by the World Health Organization) in hair samples from 40% of the Madre de Dios residents that they tested. The Duke team has examined about 800 people living along a major highway in the region, 100 people living beside the river and 2,000 in the Amarakaeri Indigenous Reserve. 
 
 Some communities in the region are closer to the gold-mining activities than others, but the 40% exposure rate held across the highway, river and reserve, says study leader William Pan, an epidemiologist with Duke’s Global Health Initiative. 
 
 The presence of mercury in human hair generally indicates that a person has been exposed to the metal through a dietary source. Pan says that the Duke studies in Madre de Dios show a strong correlation between human mercury exposure and fish consumption. Since 2009, studies by Pan’s group1, and by tropical ecologist Luis Fernandez at the Carnegie Institution for Science at Stanford University in California, have found high mercury levels in some species of fish, particularly large catfish and in fish that eat other fish. 
 
 Peru’s government used the Duke team’s latest study to determine which riverside communities should receive the emergency aid. Officials are trying to help affected residents to replace the high-risk fish in their diets with other sources of protein. During the emergency period, the government will give food, including canned ocean fish, and multivitamins to combat anaemia, to roughly 15,000 of the 48,000 people affected. 
 
 Routes of exposure 
 
 Pan says that these steps should reduce the body burden of mercury in people who also cut their consumption of contaminated fish, because the primary route of mercury exposure in the region seems to be through food. 
 
 The government is also considering whether its food aid should include supplies of the grain quinoa. Preliminary data from Duke's household surveys in the Madre de Dios region shows a correlation between quinoa consumption and lower mercury levels. 
 
 Minaya says that the government’s long-term plan also includes helping communities to establish fish farms. However, the 60-day emergency period is set to end days before a new president — who will be elected on 5 June — takes office on 28 July. But Minaya is confident that the next administration will continue to monitor and address the mercury pollution problem, despite opposition from regional and local government officials. 
 
 They have criticized the emergency decree, arguing that the link between high mercury levels in people and fish consumption in the Madre de Dios region has not been proved. These officials are also worried that the government’s decision to declare a public-health emergency could harm tourism in the nearby Manú National Park and Tambopata National Reserve. 
 
 Because of the growing concerns about mercury exposure, Fernandez is leading a project at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, to study the metal’s effects on human and environmental health in the Amazon. As director of the Center for Amazonian Scientific Innovation at Wake Forest, Fernandez will lead a team of US researchers who are collaborating with colleagues at the Peruvian Amazon Research Institute and the National Amazonian University of Madre de Dios.
– Gold miners hoping to strike it rich in Peru appear to have inflicted the miserable side effect of mercury poisoning on an estimated 48,000 people. Peru's government declared a 60-day health emergency last month after Duke researchers analyzed hair from a sample of 3,000 Madre de Dios residents and found that 40% showed mercury levels above the maximum recommended by the WHO, reports Nature. The area has been booming, with gold production in March up 28% from a year previously. But to extract the gold, miners use a method involving mercury that results in about 40 tons of the latter being dumped into waterways annually. The Duke study suggests those with mercury poisoning—which can cause brain or kidney damage in severe cases—likely ate contaminated fish. "We now know with certainty what the source of the exposure is," says Peru's deputy health minister. "We are not going to solve this in two months, or even in a year, but the Health Ministry has to start." Under the health emergency, 25 villages spread across 33,000 square miles will receive food and medical aid, including canned fish, multivitamins to help with anemia, and perhaps quinoa, which researchers say may help lower mercury levels. Community fish farms are also planned, but Peru's presidential election on June 5 may present a hurdle. One of two top candidates is a former mining minister and both support the industry, an analyst tells AFP. Some government officials also aren't convinced that fish consumption is responsible for the poisonings and worry the emergency declaration will hurt tourism. (See how seals play a part in the mercury cycle.)