POLLUTION BLOG

2022 was a year of growth. Pure Earth programs doubled in size, enabling us to expand our focus on lead and mercury in the most impacted countries. As a result of this expansion, long-time Pure Earth officer Drew McCartor, who...

Out of 121 applicants from 22 countries, a team from Pure Earth Colombia emerged as one of four winners of The Artisanal Mining Grand Challenge to develop new innovations to conserve the Amazon rainforest. Pure Earth's innovative technique uses copper...

For over four years, Pure Earth has been working with a mining association in an alliance that was formed thanks to the working relationship between the association's president Vilma C. and Pure Earth local coordinator France Cabanillas.  Today, the mining...

On October 20, just days before we launched our global outreach for International Lead Poisoning Prevention Week (ILPPW), we received word that Pure Earth President Richard Fuller was being recognized as one of Vox's Future Perfect 50, honoring individuals building a more perfect future. In...

Lead poisoning in Mexico is an urgent health problem that can cause brain damage,  IQ loss, and other developmental delays especially in children who eat food prepared and served in lead-glazed pottery. Despite the fact that almost half of all...

Recent high profile news reports, such NBC's "Paradise Lost: The weight of gold," are bringing fresh attention to the problem of mercury pollution and deforestation. Our latest story from the field shows the progress we are making in researching and...

Out of 121 applicants from 22 countries, a team from Pure Earth Colombia has emerged as one of the top 13 finalists selected for a $1 million challenge prize to protect the Amazon from impacts of artisanal and small-scale gold...

In a remote mining corridor in Peru, a mining association called AMATAF is on a mission to change the face of gold mining in the Amazon. [caption id="attachment_19667" align="alignnone" width="600"] Land degraded by gold mining can be seen in the...

Pure Earth reached several milestones in 2021, including critical recognition as the most effective organization working today to solve the global childhood lead poisoning crisis! We are especially proud of this as it reflects the hard work put in by the...

Why are women's circles important? Because as women, we spend our time caring for others. We take care of men, the elderly, children, but sometimes we forget to also take care of ourselves. Women's circles are important because historically, those...

Pure Earth's Daniel Estrada testing the yard of a home in Mexico for the presence of toxic lead. What is the true scope of lead poisoning in Mexico? For the first time, we have a clearer picture, thanks to a...

In May 2018, Pure Earth held a lead-free workshop for nine potters in Maragogipinho, Brazil. This was an important first step in helping a community, where some residents had blood lead levels as much as 15 times above the EPA’s level...

For years, parents in Malambo, Colombia, didn't know that their children were sleeping on poison. Surrounded by five lead smelters, Malambo was heavily contaminated with lead. Over the years, lead had polluted the ground, settled on almost every surface in...

Lead Poisoning Study: 300 mothers and their newborns In 2015, Pure Earth worked with the National Institute of Public Health (INSP) in Mexico on the first-ever effort to detect and measure exposure to lead poisoning at a state level in...

Alejandro celebrated his 13th birthday recently with a new mattress, but what he received was a potential lifetime of safe and sound sleep. He is one of about 50 children living near a lead smelter in Malambo, Colombia, who we found...

When Pure Earth visited Maragogipinho, a village in the town of Aratuípe in Brazil, in 2017 as part of the Toxic Sites Identification Program (TSIP), the team found lead concentrations in the soil as high as 44,500 ppm (the EPA level...

https://youtu.be/V6IxvUExAlQ Pure Earth's toxic site investigators can be found the world over. Their mission? To walk the earth in order to find, map and assess polluted sites in low and middle-income countries, where residents are being poisoned where they live. The...

This post is by Charlie Espinosa, Pure Earth intern for Latin America. A 2014 study conducted by Universidad Naciónal de Colombia revealed high lead levels in all students attending La Bonga Elementary School. Located in Malambo, Colombia, the school sits in...

Watch a video of the project above, or click here. This post is from Charles Espinosa, an intern working with our Latin America program team. Charlie is pursuing a master's degree in Latin American studies at Columbia University, with a...

Earlier this year, Pure Earth launched an ambitious project in Peru, supported by Brilliant Earth, a global leader in ethically sourced fine jewelry.  The goal: to transform the Chichiqueros artisanal gold mining community into a mercury-free model.  The Chichiqueros work in an area...

  Earlier this year, Pure Earth launched an ambitious project supported by Brilliant Earth, a global leader in ethically sourced fine jewelry.  The goal: to transform the Chichiqueros artisanal gold mining community into a mercury-free model.  The Chichiqueros work in an area in...

  This post comes to you from Alfonso Rodríguez, Pure Earth's new country director in Colombia.  The Pure Earth team at a toxic site visit in Colombia: (l to r) Daniel Estrada, Alfonso Rodríguez, John Keith Pure Earth has expanded its Toxic...

[caption id="attachment_4960" align="aligncenter" width="879"] A view of the district of Laberinto from the Inambari River. Over years of constant shifting, the river has transformed the area into a complicated landscape.[/caption] Located about an hour from the city of Puerto Maldonado,...

Dirty Talk With A View  For our latest Dirty Talk (Pure Earth's awareness-raising lunchtime series), we brought experts to the New York Times building to talk about pollution in Latin America. The event attracted a full house and boasted some of the best...

Meet Filipino gold miners Leoncio Na-Oy (pictured below, right) and Rudy Onos. Over the past few years, Pure Earth has been working with Leoncio and Rudy to test and teach a century-old, traditional method of mercury-free gold mining Leoncio rediscovered in his...

Over the past year, we have started to finally see a shift connecting the silos that have kept efforts on the environment, health and development in separate disciplines. The catalyst for much of this progress has come from the creation...

[caption id="attachment_16047" align="alignnone" width="300"] Photo by Alex Proimos (Lake Titicaca) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons[/caption] A milestone has been reached in the long struggle to clean up the famed Lake Titicaca. Bolivia and Peru have agreed to provide more than...

AN URGENT CALL IN THE NIGHT Earlier this year, Sandra Gualtero, Pure Earth's regional director for Latin America and the Caribbean, received a late-night email labelled “URGENT.” It was from a nurse in Mexico who had just discovered a newborn baby with...

[Read a version of this story in Spanish.] At this year's Festival Internacional Cervantino, one of the most important arts and cultural events in Latin America, a dinner designed to showcase the culinary culture of Morelos state became a milestone in the fight against...

Gold miners are revered here... This statue, which takes pride of place in the center of a gold mining town in Peru, speaks volumes about the relationship between gold and many locals. Artisanal and small-scale gold mining is a traditional...

Mexico's 500-year old tradition of using toxic lead-glazes in pottery is a problem that continues to plague residents to this day. In our paper "Blood Lead Levels in Mexico and Pediatric Burden of Disease Implications,” published in the Annals of Global...

[caption id="attachment_3044" align="alignnone" width="640"] The media turned out in force to help us launch "Barro Aprobado" and spread awareness about lead-free pottery in Mexico.[/caption] Across Mexico every day, millions of meals served in homes and restaurants come with an extra,...

Up to 20% of Mexicans have elevated blood level levels. This is from the use of traditional Mexican pottery---the colorful plates, pots and other wares that you see in almost every home and restaurant in the country. Traditional Mexican pottery has been...

It is a small but powerful tool.  The handheld XRF (X-ray fluorescence) analyzer can identify toxic particles in soil in about 30 seconds, allowing remediation crews to quickly locate and determine the extent of any contamination, and potentially begin life-saving cleanup without...

Filipino Miners in Bolivia Roadmap For Cleanup More Pilot Projects on the Way Blacksmith brought Filipino gold miners to Latin America in 2013 to test and teach the Benguet method, (sometimes known as the "borax method") to artisanal miners in Bolivia. If successful,...

A new report provides a roadmap that can be used to accelerate pollution cleanup in Latin America.  With input from experts from seven Latin American countries (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru, Uruguay) and the U.S., the report examines environmental...