Gold

Gold resonates with the heart.

My first introduction to gold was at seventeen. I visited the Gold Museum in Bogota, Colombia. There was one room that we as tourists entered in darkness and then the lights were turned on. We were e surrounded by a room full of gold objects.

In Bali, the bells that the priests use to call their gods uses gold in the making of the bells. 
Had you purchased an oz. of gold in late 2000 it would have cost you about $279, and today that one oz. would be worth $1875.

Years later while in Indonesia I came across some gold mines and workers at the site. In the the neighborhood people were extracting the gold and I saw the mercury they used in the process. It did not take much imagination to what happened to the used mercury and I later learnt that the Island that this gold was being mined at has serious issues with mercury contamination. 

In the West we were warned about mercury fillings, the potential poisoning they can do and that is reality small amount in a filling and we are urged to remove these mercury filled filling if we have them. The tooth filling example puts into some perspective of the pollution that goes on in parts of Asia. Mining companies are known to dump large amount of mercury into the sea and often get away with this. 

Most of that gold has come from just three countries: China, Australia, and South Africa. The United States ranked fourth in gold production in 2016.

Gold mining has some of the largest human and environmental impacts of all types of metal mining.