Effects of Gold Mining on the Environment | Sciencing
This smallscale form of gold mining has little effect on the body of water, but the largescale practice of mining gold from ore can have tremendous negative effects on water quality. Gold typically sits in ore and sediment that contains toxins such as mercury. When rivers are dredged to mine large placer deposits of gold, these toxins float downstream and enter the food web, as they have done in California''s South