Mining and health status in Peru : Evidence for a period of minor environmental protection

This research studies the relation between health status and exposure to mining activities in Peru as an indicator of possible effects from pollution. It engages with different types of literature to try to create a contribution to the environmental justice movement and evidence for the case of mining in Peru. The document relies on data from the Demographic and Health Survey from Peru (ENDES) and data on the location of the main producing mining units in the country for the period 2014-2019. To explore this relation, the research approach employs a fixed effect model, with two variations, first considering the changes when taking into account the effects from mining royalties and the specific effects from metallic mining; and second, it includes variables which indicates the ethnic identities, in an attempt to ob-serve health disparities across them. The results suggest a negative effect of a direct exposure to mining on the hemoglobin levels on blood and on the height to age indicator, which represents stunting, both for the case of children. Moreover, the estimates indicate a major incidence of Acute Respiratory Infections in children with a quechua identity, within a mining context. Opposite to the hypothesis, a closer distance to mining units was associated with less incidence of depression, which is considered to be a result of positive expectations that mining can generate. Overall, it was observed that although mining can affect health negatively, there are multiple mechanisms through which mining can have an impact on lives, therefore it is still challenging to find a more direct relation between the variables of interest as well as other variables which can explore health. Finally, the data availability only allowed to explore the variables which were mentioned, not broader understandings of health and unfortunately, the research could not find a clear relation among health, mining and conflicts.