Mercury poisoning is sweeping through Senegal’s gold mines

In the gold-rich hills of Senegal’s Kedougou Region, several women spend their days sifting through mounds of sediment, washing out fragments of gold with mercury. According to AP on May 13, the neurotoxin remains the most widespread method for separating gold from its ore in the region’s informal mining sector.

Women miners bear the responsibility for extracting the precious metal, often mixing the amalgam with their bare hands; gloves and masks are rarely used. One miner, Sadio Camara, told AP in an interview that she knows the process is risky: “When we go to exchange the gold and they heat it again, those guys wear masks to avoid the smoke.”

At home, Camara heats mercury-laced nuggets over an open flame with no such protection. Like many other women miners, her children stand just a few feet away, breathing in the poison.

“We are doing this because of ignorance and lack of means,” Camara says. “If the government knows what is good for us, come and show us.”

In Kedougou, home to 98% of Senegal’s gold mines, more than 5 tons of mercury are used annually. Cheap, effective, and dangerous, the heavy metal has become the dominant choice for extracting gold. The sector is illegal, yet widespread, with women like Camara engaging in the enterprise daily to make ends meet.

Exposure to even small amounts of mercury can have adverse effects. Repeated exposure, however, is deadly, causing irreversible brain damage, developmental delays, tremors, and loss of vision, hearing, and coordination.

“The consequences come later,” says Doudou Dramé, president of an organization that advocates for safer conditions for gold miners in Kedougou. Once released, mercury spreads easily through air, water, and soil. After heavy rains, it seeps into rivers, poisoning fish and threatening entire communities downstream.

Modou Goumbala, a manager at an NGO that supports community development in southeastern Senegal, says the consequences disproportionately impact women: “Women do the laundry with water, women do the dishes. Women wash the children. And women often use the waterways for this, not having sources of safe drinking water.”

Efforts to address the problem remain woefully inadequate. In 2016, Senegal ratified the Minamata Convention on Mercury, committing to phase out the use of mercury in mining activities. Yet nearly a decade later, the substance remains unregulated and widely used.

In 2019, the government announced a plan to build 400 mercury-free processing units across mining zones. As of May 2025, only one such facility has been completed and is underutilized due to poor access and inconsistent power supply.

Authorities have also suspended mining within 500 meters of the Faleme River, which cuts through Senegal’s gold belt, but enforcement is negligible. As mining continues unchecked, critics worry that government regulations barely scratch the surface of a systemic problem.

AP/ Maghrebi