A Peruvian engineer says he has come up with an environmentally sound [machine] to isolate gold from clumps of sand without using toxic mercury that wildcat miners in the Amazon basin rely on to extract the precious metal...Environmentalists say much of it will eventually make its way into the food chain, causing health problems...Peru's government has long struggled with…reducing pollution in the Amazon basin...The machine would produce up to 95 percent of the gold obtained by using mercury by wildcat miners, who often put their own health at risk by exposing themselves to the toxic metal. Villachica runs Smallvill, a Peruvian firm that focuses on green technology and that built a plant to clean waste water of the mining company Volcan. But his latest device is still unknown and it remains to be seen whether it can transform Peru's mining industry.