• 5 myths about mercury in Madre de Dios

    Sunday, September 29, 2013

    A new study found unsafe amounts of mercury in fish and people in Puerto Maldonado, the capital of Peru’s southeastern Madre de Dios Region. Average mercury levels in nine of…

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  • Andes mountains

    Sunday, September 29, 2013

    The uplift of the Andes mountains over millions of years has been due to a combination of plate tectonics and volcanism. Tectonic plates are sections of the earth’s crust that are in…

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  • Sunset

    Pacific coast

    Sunday, September 29, 2013

    Peru’s coast is a long strip of desert cut in more than 50 places by seasonal rivers that flow from the Andes to the Pacific Ocean. But the coast…

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  • Tropical glaciers

    Sunday, September 29, 2013

    The Andes are topped by the largest concentration of ice anywhere in the Earth’s tropics (the belt around the middle of the planet, between 30 degrees North and 30 degrees…

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  • Guano islands

    Sunday, September 29, 2013

    Along the Peruvian coast is a string of rocky islands and peninsulas that are home to guanay cormorants, boobies, and pelicans. The birds leave the islands every morning…

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5 myths about mercury in Madre de Dios

A new study found unsafe amounts of mercury in fish and people in Puerto Maldonado, the capital of Peru’s southeastern Madre de Dios Region. Average mercury levels in nine of the 15 most commonly consumed fish species were above the limit recommended by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency. Farmed fish had the lowest levels, according to Luis Fernández of the Carnegie Institution for Science’s Global Ecology Program at Stanford University in the United States, who led the study.

Seventy-eight percent of adults tested in Puerto Maldonado had levels that were more than twice the recommended limit for humans. The highest levels – three times the recommended threshold – were found in women of childbearing age. That is especially alarming, because mercury can damage the developing fetus’ neurological system.
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Peru and Beyond

5 myths about mercury in Madre de Dios

Sunday, September 29, 2013

A new study found unsafe amounts of mercury in fish and people in Puerto Maldonado, the capital of Peru’s southeastern Madre de Dios Region. Average mercury levels in nine of…

Telltale hairs reveal mercury in Peruvian miners’ bodies

Sunday, September 29, 2013

A new study shows that mercury from wildcat gold mining in the Peruvian Amazon is accumulating in the bodies of miners and other people in Peru’s southeastern Madre de Dios region. The…

Can’t see the forest for the (palm) trees

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Oil palm plantations in Kalimantan – the Indonesian name for the island known in English as Borneo – are expanding at the expense of forest, leading to an increase in carbon emissions,…

Would you like some mercury with that fish?

Sunday, September 29, 2013

Several small studies have shown that some fish in the Madre de Dios region in southeastern Peru contain dangerous levels of mercury. A larger study of mercury in…