Gold Jewelry may be beautiful, but digging up gold can be very dangerous
if you don’t know what you’re doing. In continents like Africa, which
never really got out of the idol worship polytheistic “the gods are in
control of everything and history has no direction” mentality, have
never caught up with the rest of the world. They are, and have always
been, people of the land. Make your living off the land, and that’s it.
So much of the poor countries make their living off of what they can dig
up from the earth. Gold is one of those things, and gold jewelry is
what they sell. The problem is, in order to make gold jewelry, you have
to first separate gold form gold ore. And usually, this ore contains
lead, which you definitely don’t want as part of your gold jewelry,
mostly since it is lethal.
But since countries like Nigeria rely on gold jewelry markets to make
their living, they have to separate the ore, and with that comes lead
into their soil, and from there, lead poisoning is not far behind. And
so it happened that this year, 163 people were killed by lead poisoning
in a village in Nigeria, after it had been discovered that lead made up
10,000 parts per per million in the soil. That’s 1% lead. That’s really,
really high, and very, very deadly. The problem with the gold jewelry
mining industry is that if it’s not regulated and it’s every family for
itself, the lead has nowhere to go but down and into the drinking water.
Aside from 163 people dying, thousands have been effected by the
adverse effects of lead poisoning. And gold jewelry isn’t going to make
them feel any better about it.
Gold Jewelry
Gold Jewelry
Gold Jewelry
Gold Jewelry
Gold Jewelry
Gold Jewelry
Gold Jewelry
Gold Jewelry
Gold Jewelry
Gold Jewelry
Gold Jewelry
Gold Jewelry
Gold Jewelry
Gold Jewelry
Fashion Accessories
Right now, they’re simple taking the top soil and throwing it into
plastic bags to shipped off and forever unbothered like nuclear waste.
What will happen to the gold jewelry industry there remains unclear but
it probably won’t end, since they have no way of making money and
sustaining themselves. And even if the villagers know for now that gold
ore can kill you if you don’t extract the gold safely, there probably
won’t be much regulation, since African culture is a tribal culture, and
governments don’t really know what they’re doing exactly. It is likely
that the gold jewelry industry will be slightly more safe as individual
families do what they can to protect themselves against lead poisoning,
but a concerted effort to regulate the gold jewelry industry in any
African country save South Africa seems far fetched.
And we can’t simply go in and build infrastructure for them. Western
culture cannot be forced on African culture. Any initiative will have to
be their own. All we can do is warn. So if you’re wearing any gold
jewelry right now, appreciate it. Someone may have gone through much
danger to get it to you from the Earth.
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