Educational measures to address mercury pollution from gold-mining activities in the Amazon

Mercury (Hg) discharge from informal gold-mining activities in the Amazon region derives from a lack of concern of the miners for the environment as well as poor knowledge about efficient gold-extraction methods. People in contact with these miners, such as physicians, priests, hygienists, social assistants, nurses, mining inspectors, union personnel, etc. also lack information-e.g., data about mercury transformations in the environment. This paper describes the educational measures being implemented by some Brazilian institutions to address mercury emissions. It also stresses the importance of Expert Systems technology, which can be a powerful tool to combine technical issues with heuristic observations for diagnosis and remedial procedures. HgEX is an Expert System developed in plain language to provide a diagnosis of the extent of mercury pollution in a region or at a single mining site. The system is designed for use by either highly-skilled professionals or uneducated mining personnel.