Mais de três mil anos de poluição com mercúrio nos Andes peruanos

Over three millennia of mercury pollution in the Peruvian Andes

Colin A. Cookea,1, Prentiss H. Balcomb, Harald Biesterc and Alexander P. Wolfea

+Author Affiliations

aDepartment of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada T6G 2E3;

bDepartment of Marine Sciences, University of Connecticut, Groton, CT 06340; and
cInstitute of Environmental Geology, Technical University of Braunschweig, Pockelsstrasse 3, 38106 Braunschweig, Germany

Edited by Mark Brenner, University of Florida, Gainesville, FL, and accepted by the Editorial Board April 13, 2009 (received for review January 16, 2009)

Abstract

We present unambiguous records of preindustrial atmospheric mercury (Hg) pollution, derived from lake-sediment cores collected near Huancavelica, Peru, the largest Hg deposit in the New World. Intensive Hg mining first began ca. 1400 BC, predating the emergence of complex Andean societies, and signifying that the region served as a locus for early Hg extraction. The earliest mining targeted cinnabar (HgS) for the production of vermillion. Pre-Colonial Hg burdens peak ca. 500 BC and ca. 1450 AD, corresponding to the heights of the Chavín and Inca states, respectively. During the Inca, Colonial, and industrial intervals, Hg pollution became regional, as evidenced by a third lake record ≈225 km distant from Huancavelica. Measurements of sediment-Hg speciation reveal that cinnabar dust was initially the dominant Hg species deposited, and significant increases in deposition were limited to the local environment. After conquest by the Inca (ca. 1450 AD), smelting was adopted at the mine and Hg pollution became more widely circulated, with the deposition of matrix-bound phases of Hg predominating over cinnabar dust. Our results demonstrate the existence of a major Hg mining industry at Huancavelica spanning the past 3,500 years, and place recent Hg enrichment in the Andes in a broader historical context.

cinnabar Inca Chavín vermillion

Footnotes

1To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: cacooke@ualberta.ca
Author contributions: C.A.C. designed research; C.A.C., P.H.B., H.B., and A.P.W. performed research; H.B. contributed new reagents/analytic tools; C.A.C., P.H.B., H.B., and A.P.W. analyzed data; and C.A.C., P.H.B., H.B., and A.P.W. wrote the paper.

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

This article is a PNAS Direct Submission. M.B. is a guest editor invited by the Editorial Board.

This article contains supporting information online at www.pnas.org/cgi/content/full/0900517106/DCSupplemental.

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