However, ASM often trades one kind of generational poverty for another, coming along with serious health risks and turmoil associated with work in an informal "cash-rich" business.
ASM sometimes provides an opportunity to diversify income in the face of a decline in subsistence agriculture. They are commonly poverty-stricken people in poor countries, ensnared by a variety of poverty traps, which take a toll on the health and well-being of individuals and communities. A particular focus is poverty as a health risk with artisanal miners. We adopt a holistic perspective toward health impacts of ASM, which includes unique occupational, environmental, and human/social drivers. Here, we set out to elucidate the scope of ASM beyond the recovery of familiar commodities, such as gold and diamonds. For many, the true scope and scale of ASM activities are unappreciated, along with the unknown health and societal impacts. Evident disadvantages with ASM are counterbalanced by the immense economic benefits.
The mining and refining processes are labor intensive and associated with a variety of health problems due to accidents, overheating, overexertion, dust inhalation, exposure to toxic chemicals and gases, violence, and illicit and prescription drug and alcohol addiction. Equipped with primitive tools like picks, shovels, buckets, and gold pans, they work mining valuable resources, like gold, diamonds, tin, lithium, rare earth elements, tantalum, and cobalt, and any other usable commodity, for example, sand, coal, or mica. Some of the poorest people in the world's poorest countries eke out a living in artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM).
The gemstones, contemporary with the crown, probably arrived in Europe by the silk trade road. The filigrees contain approximately 86 wt % Au, 7 wt % Ag, and 7 wt % Cu, thus confirming a gold-rich composition.
Analyses have identified emeralds from Pakistan, reddish pink spinels from Tajikistan, red almandine garnets from India, turquoise from Iran, blue sapphires from Sri Lanka or Myanmar, and European pearls. Raman and portable X-ray fluorescence spectrometer (pXRF) techniques have been used to determine the nature and sources of all samples, as well as the composition of filigrees. The crown is decorated by filigrees, flowers, and approximately 400 pearls and coloured (green, reddish pink, turquoise, red, blue) stones showing simple cutting with various sizes and shapes. This beautiful piece of goldsmithery is made of eight gold plates, topped by round lobes, and connected to each other by hinges blocked with a pin decorated by a pearl. The reliquary crown, hosted in the diocesan museum of Namur, was produced during the beginning of the 13th century to shelter a fragment of the holy crown of thorns.
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