By Gabriela S\u00e1 Pessoa BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) \u2014 Brazil is using forensic science to tackle illegal gold mining in the Amazon, a top threat to the rainforest, Indigenous groups and other communities there that has accelerated deforestation and driven mercury contamination to dangerous levels. The work takes place at the National Institute of Criminalistics in Brasilia, the country’s capital, where federal police have set up a \u201cgold lab\u201d that collects and analyses samples from across the country. The objective is to determine if a newly acquired sample \u2014 gold seized in a police raid, for example \u2014 comes from a protected area, meaning it has been illegally mined. It’s called \u201cgold fingerprinting\u201d \u2014 tracing the origin of gold samples with high precision. Tracing gold is like looking at a person’s… <\/p>\n
By Gabriela S\u00e1 Pessoa BRASILIA, Brazil (AP) \u2014 Brazil is using forensic science to tackle illegal gold mining in the Amazon, a top threat to the rainforest, Indigenous groups and other communities there that has accelerated deforestation and driven mercury contamination to dangerous levels. The work takes place at the National Institute of Criminalistics in Brasilia, the country’s capital, where federal police have set up a \u201cgold lab\u201d that collects and analyses samples from across the country. The objective is to determine if a newly acquired sample \u2014 gold seized in a police raid, for example \u2014 comes from a protected area, meaning it has been illegally mined. It’s called \u201cgold fingerprinting\u201d \u2014 tracing the origin of gold samples with high precision. Tracing gold is like looking at a person’s... <\/p>\n