About AppelGlobal
Peter Appel established AppelGlobal early 2015. AppelGlobal focus on reducing global mercury pollution. Two-fold action is used:
- Teaching small-scale gold miners to extract gold using mercury-free methods,
- Explore ways to clean the hundreds of thousand mercury polluted mine tailings from small-scale gold mining littering planet Earth.
AppelGlobal’s expertise is based on work carried out during more than ten years in the framework of the Geological Survey of Denmark and Greenland (GEUS) where Peter Appel was employed as senior research scientist until 31.1.2015 and Affiliated as emeritus until 30.4.2016. That work comprised a broad spectrum of problems:
- Environmental hazards caused by small-scale mining
- Health hazards caused by small-scale mining
- Conflict resolution between small-scale miners, commercial mining companies and governments
Much work has aimed at fulfilling governmental obligations to follow the Minamata Convention. The work has been carried out in Southeast Asia, Africa, South- and Central America.
Contributors
GEUS has contributed significantly in most projects with the work of Jørgen Kystol and John Tychsen together with different types of laboratory work. The work has also been sponsored by a number of donors such as World Bank, European Union, Danish Ministry of Environment, Blacksmith (Pure Earth) and Sumitomo Foundation, Japan. A large part of the work is carried out in close cooperation with small-scale gold miners from Emerald Cooperation of small-scale gold miners, Philippines.
The cleaning of mercury polluted tailings has so far been sponsored by Danish Ministry of Environment through Elplatek Denmark, Danish Technical University, Oro Industries California, Sumitomo Foundation, Japan and US Department of State through Blacksmith (Pure Earth) and has been carried out together with partners in Philippines, Nicaragua and Peru.
Small-scale mine tailings in a table spoon. Shiny dots are mercury flour
