The Environmental Legacy of California's Gold Rush: Arsenic and Mercury Contamination from Historic Mining

• Why are arsenic and mercury associated with California's gold mines?
• What types of arsenic and mercury contamination can be directly related to historic mining?
• How are geochemists studying the distribution and transformations of these contaminants in the environment?
• How does arsenic and mercury contamination from mining affect human and animal populations in California?

Speaker: Andrea Foster, USGS; Christopher Kim, Chapman University