New technologies, international partnerships and luxury buyers are driving a global shift toward sustainable, mercury-free gold. Courtesy Pure Earth Gold has captivated humanity for millennia, ...

An interdisciplinary team of experts in green chemistry, engineering and physics at Flinders University in Australia has developed a safer and more sustainable approach to extract and recover gold ...

KEDOUGOU, Senegal (AP) — The quickest way to separate gold from rock, Sadio Camara says, is with a drop of mercury. She empties a dime-sized packet of the silvery liquid into a plastic bucket of muddy ...

BOGOTA, Colombia (AP) — A global mercury conference in Geneva faced sharp criticism Friday from environmental and Indigenous groups for failing to take stronger steps against mercury use in ...

Gold-mining equipment operates in water near a river bank with trees in the background. Illegal gold mining along the Madre de Dios River near Puerto Maldonado in the Amazon River basin of Peru.

Mercury is still used in small-scale mining to extract gold from ore in more than 70 countries, despite it contaminating rivers and soils, and being toxic to humans. At the sixth Conference of the ...