Heidi Hausermann
University of Michigan, MI·Earth & Environmental Science
In small-scale gold mining around the world, miners mix mercury with ore to capture gold and then burn the mercury off as vapor. This artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) is now the largest source of mercury emissions worldwide, and mercury is a strong nerve poison.
- Fields
Earth & Environmental Science
Social Science
Public Health & Epidemiology
- Topics
mercury
Hg
artisanal and small-scale gold mining
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Dec 2028
What they work on
- Determine the local and regional fate of mercury vaporized from artisanal gold mining in Ghana, using passive air samplers, bulk deposition, throughfall, litterfall and soil sampling with mass budgets and Lagrangian plume models.
- Measure mercury accumulation in staple crops such as cassava, cocoa yam and plantain grown beside mining sites, and identify which soil and landscape features increase crop mercury.
- Document how local residents understand mercury contamination and exposure through community mapping and semi-structured interviews, and compare this knowledge to measured contamination patterns.
- Use findings to run workshops and training on agricultural and mining practices that reduce mercury accumulation in crops and other local exposures.
More about the research
Little is known about where this mercury lands, whether it builds up in nearby crops, or how local people understand the risks. These factors together determine who is actually exposed.
Why it matters
Farmers and families in Ghanaian mining communities may be exposed to mercury through crops grown next to mines, not only through mining work or eating fish. Identifying which soils and landscapes concentrate mercury in staple crops could guide farming and mining practices that reduce exposure. The data could improve mercury models and support goals of the Minamata Convention on Mercury, and the approach could help assess environmental injustice elsewhere, including the U.S.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Christian Zlolniski
University of Texas at Arlington, TX·Social Science
Document labor arrangements and working conditions in artisanal and small-scale mining that supplies natural resources for sustainably branded products.
Carl Lamborg
University of California-Santa Cruz, CA·Earth & Environmental Science
Characterize zooplankton communities along the central and western Aleutian Islands at sites with known differences in mercury levels in marine life, combining oceanography and genomics.
Kevin Schaefer
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Earth & Environmental Science
Quantify how different environmental conditions affect mercury accumulation in permafrost-region soils, with uncertainty estimates, by linking mercury pathways to existing models of the land carbon cycle.
The school
University of Michigan: 124 labs on PI Pages, $2.1B a year on research, 963 research doctorates a year.
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