Using mercury for Gold recovery

[FrugalRefiner]

My dad worked as a maintenance machinist for an auto manufacturer. When he would replace large mercury filled switches, he would bring the mercury home and my brother and I would play with it on the kitchen table, pushing it back and forth at each other like a game of hockey. Of course, some ended up lost on the floor.

When I was 10 or 12 years old, I had a little corner in the basement crawlspace (it was about 4 feet high) where I would "experiment" with my chemistry sets. I remember putting some mercury in a test tube and heating it over an alcohol lamp to see what would happen. When it got hot enough it bumped pretty hard and shook the test tube in my hand as it boiled a bit...

That was nearly 50 years ago. I'm not aware of any health problems linked to my experiments.

Dave

 

[solar_plasma]

But houses are much better thermo isolated today, at least in the colder regions, so there is less ventilation. The same mercury games would probably cause a higher and longer chronic exposition, today.

 

[heliman4141]

This brings to mind a program on TV I watched last yr,
It was about how the poor down in South America recovered Gold in the jungles. They would walk deep into the jungle then dig up a spot that had black sand & wash it in a huge bucket.......
When it was showing Gold they would place the Gold bearing mess in a smaller 5 gal bucket with water & pure Mercury & then, in their bare feet, step into the bucket & stomp about mixing the mess up to draw all the Gold to a mass. No boots & no gloves at all. Just bare feet.
After this scary situation it got worse.............he then poured out the water & put the Mercury bearing Gold in a metal pan & placed it over a fire to evaporate the Mercury. And yes, he was standing downwind of the smoke....The photo journalist said most of these people didn't live past 35..........understandable from what I witnessed. Really scary & sad program about what some do for a few bucks in a 3rd World enviorment. Can't remember if it was Vice or Discover that I watched it on but Vice shows the real World as bad as it gets. People do this for real everyday, its insane.

Dave

 

[Geo]

Mercury is an amazing metal. It is an excellent collector of other fine metals. As long as the person understands the dangers and the safe handling, usage, recovery and disposal, there's really little danger in its use. The problem comes from people wanting to make a fast buck and making short cuts and ignorance of the safety issues. Among other things, mercury damages DNA and causes hideous, monstrous mutations in newborns. It can be absorbed through the skin, ingested, inhaled as a fume. Stressing the safe handling is important to reduce exposure. Mercury does a fantastic job as a collector when prospecting. Prospecting is the search of precious metals in its native environment. After the precious metal has been found, mercury should no longer be used because safer methods of recovery are available. Prospecting actually requires very little mercury to be effective.

I am not advocating mercury use in any way and use of it should be avoided by all but trained individuals.

 

[Irons]

Mercury is an amazing metal. It is an excellent collector of other fine metals. As long as the person understands the dangers and the safe handling, usage, recovery and disposal, there's really little danger in its use. The problem comes from people wanting to make a fast buck and making short cuts and ignorance of the safety issues. Among other things, mercury damages DNA and causes hideous, monstrous mutations in newborns. It can be absorbed through the skin, ingested, inhaled as a fume. Stressing the safe handling is important to reduce exposure. Mercury does a fantastic job as a collector when prospecting. Prospecting is the search of precious metals in its native environment. After the precious metal has been found, mercury should no longer be used because safer methods of recovery are available. Prospecting actually requires very little mercury to be effective.

I am not advocating mercury use in any way and use of it should be avoided by all but trained individuals.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease

The people who did this were 'trained individuals'.

In Maine, the use of Mercury in ANY quantity has to be approved by the State and only after a review board approves it. There is no need to use Mercury, no matter how good it does the job. The Penobscot River, near here is probably permanently contaminated from Mercury that came from a Chlorine Plant that supplied the Paper Mills with Chlorine to bleach Paper Pulp. A once productive Marine Ecosystem has been destroyed with the loss of, who knows how many thousands of good jobs to pad the bottom line of some corporate headquarters in NYC.
Nothing personal, Geo, but any apologist rhetoric gets my hackles-up.

 

[Geo]

No offense taken. If people obeyed laws and rules there would be no need for them. People will be people and like most stuff in nature will follow the path of least resistance. Because of the interest and size of this one topic, it shows me that telling people to avoid it and have no contact with it is a bit unrealistic. Without providing some safety issues and how to minimize exposure and contamination, people will do what people do. There are many things that I personally would not do or attempt and would try to talk someone out of doing it if I could. Failing that, I would try to influence good safety practice. Just by telling someone they should not do something peaks peoples interest in the subject. Would it not be better for people to learn how to deal with dangerous substances from a trusted source than just browsing the net? Mercury is regulated in the U.S.A. and many other countries but the countries that have just enough technology to be dangerous to themselves and no restrictions is worth trying to educate. If this forum was just seen in the US and the UK, this whole topic would be a moot subject. I could be a bit off base but I believe that some education about safety is better than none at all. No offense meant to anyone.

 

[solar_plasma]

The EU has stopped the export of mercury in 2011. The UN tries to force the ending of mining and export of mercury until 2020.

 

[butcher]

This is one topic I hate to see pop up on the forum, I have had enough problems with this metal.

There is no use for Mercury in mining or in prospecting, if there is gold you can find it, or recover it by several other means, which would work better, and safer.

Modern methods, and education has replaced this dangerous metal, in mining, those who think they still need it to find or collect fine gold, lack education.

There is no use for mercury in recovery or refining, those who think it may be useful need education.

If mining, and prospecting, or in recovery and refining it is a good idea to get educated on this metal, and how to deal with it safely, as in these fields of work, you will most likely run into to it.

 

[Harold_V]

My opinion?
The only justifiable reason one might have for dealing with mercury is if they process dental amalgam (for silver recovery). Beyond that, there is no real need.

Harold

 

[butcher]

Harold I agree 100%, and then it should only be dealt with, after proper education.

When prospecting, (or mining) mercury may be found, and need to be dealt with safely and responsibly.

Elemental mercury can be recovered from the bottom of the creek or rivers; it can be found, sucked up while dredging, or found while panning.

In mining this metal can be a component in the ore (not normally where the gold is), or even found in elemental form bleeding elemental mercury from the rock of a mountain.

Mercury in our streams and rivers, (the very water we drink from), in this part of the country was not as much from the mercury in the ore of these mountains, most of this mercury was introduced to these water ways by man, who used it to collect fine gold in our history, they used and added tons of mercury, to the large sluice's used in recovery of fine gold in the creeks and rivers, much of it was lost in that process, dumping tons of this toxic metal in our streams and rivers, which still remains there to this day. Contaminating our waterways.
In our history it was not that they could have used another method to mine, to recover the fine gold, (they could have used another method to recover the fine gold), instead they chose the easiest and fastest method to recover the gold, and they had little regard to what it may do to the environment, somewhat out of ignorance, and somewhat out of just plain disregard, they were there to rape the land, get what they could, as fast, and easy as they could, and move on to the next place that may have shown better prospect, or to another virgin area that contained what they wanted the easy gold.

Today we should know better, educate ourselves to its danger, be responsible, and use the better methods (many of which have improved to recover fine gold), and understand how to safely deal with this dangerous metal only when we absolutely have to.

There is no reason to use mercury in recovery or refining.
There is no reason to use mercury in prospecting or mining.

There are reasons we should educate ourselves on this metal, and understand how to deal with this toxic metal safely, and responsibly, should we have to.

 

[Geo]

I agree with everything Harold and Butcher said, the use of mercury should be avoided. I hope no one took what I said out of context. Readers here are influenced and led by members who should know right from wrong. There are correct ways and wrong ways of doing anything. The people who was contaminating everything was definitely doing it the wrong way. We recommend using lead as a collector of metals and it's toxic effects rivals that of mercury in birth defects. When prospecting, you would not normally have everything to do a proper assay with you. Using a collector gives a better idea of what metals are available without loading out pounds of material to test later. People are doing this whether we say it's ok or not anyway. Do we turn a blind eye and say, "well if your stupid enough to do it, do it without our help"? If people use lead, like is recommended, well, it just seems like a blurred line to me.

I will not comment about it any further. Like I said, I do not advocate the use of mercury in any way, if common sense fails and and you feel the need to use a dangerous element no matter what it is, please educate yourself about the safe handling, storage, use and proper disposal of it.

 

[Lou]

The irresponsible use of mercury in gold recovery, particularly artisan in South America, is why there is an export ban in the US since 2012 or so. It has put people at Bethlehem Apparatus from the mercury sales business to the mercury retirement business (making it back into cinnabar from whence it came) and now the element is expensive to dispose of to industrial users.

That said, there is no use for it here on this forum and I, for one, would like to see discussion ceased about it.