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By Anthony Boadle
BRASILIA, Jan 24 (Reuters) – Prosecutors pursuing illegal gold mining in Brazil’s Amazon region opened an investigation on Wednesday into online sales of mercury on Mercado Libre, Latin America’s largest e-commerce site.
The Federal Prosecutors’ Office recommended Mercado Libre ban mercury ads from its platform, or inform authorities who is placing them and establish better controls over the trade in what it called “an extremely dangerous pollutant.”
Wild miners in the Amazon use liquid mercury to gather gold scraps and separate them from the ore and soil as they dredge muddy excavations in the rainforest.
Mercury pollutes rivers and poisons fish, a staple food for indigenous communities in the Amazon, where studies show women and children have dangerously high levels of mercury in their blood.
Stopping the sale mercury, along with fuel supplies and the financing of mine prospects is part of the Brazilian government’s crackdown on illegal gold mining that has surged in recent years in the Amazon.
“Mercado Libre’s sales platform was used indiscriminately for the commercialization of liquid mercury, without the origin of the fabrics or the parties involved in the transactions being known,” the prosecutor’s report states.
Mercado Libre said it was ready to help prosecutors with their investigations into the sale of prohibited products.
“As soon as such products are identified, the ads are removed and the merchant is informed, who would possibly be excluded from the platform,” Mercado Libre said in a statement.
Mercury is a controlled substance in Brazil and its sale is illegal if it is registered indicating its origin and use.
Brazil does not produce mercury, which will have to be imported, and illegal purchases are made through the Internet on platforms such as Mercado Libre, an Argentine company based in Uruguay and incorporated in the United States.
Mercury poisoning can cause serious neurological and infant deformities.
A 2019 study conducted by Fiocruz, Brazil’s largest biomedical research laboratory, discovered mercury in 56% of Yanomami women and girls in the Amazon region of Maturacá.
Brazil is a signatory to the Minamata Convention, a foreign treaty designed for human health and the environment, named after the devastating mercury poisoning incident in Japan.
(Reporting via Anthony Boadle; editing by Leslie Adler)