The miners imported resistant strains of diseases which the Yanomami had no immunity to. In three years (from 1987 to 1990) 1,500, Brazilian Yanomami--15% of their population-- died from diseases such as tuberculosis, malaria, whooping cough, measles, and influenza. Whole villages were wiped out. Tuberculosis is still epidemic today, and the Yanomami have a level of active TB that is a hundred times higher than that found among other Brazilians. National Academy of Sciences reports that the level of active TB among the Yanomami is about 64 percent, and apparently impervious to vaccines. The Yanomami had no contact with the disease until the 1980s, and subsequently had no immunity. The groups who carried the infection into their lands have had centuries of exposure. (the Yanomami sanitation habits, particularly the custom of preparing a drink by chewing the ingredients and spitting the liquid into a pot to ferment, then drinking it from a common gourd, make controlling TB impossible.)
Malaria and other diseases are killing the Yanomami at a rate of 13% per year and have thinned their rank to 8,000 already. As a result of the rampant malaria, fertility is nearly zero, and those people who have survived are sick and starving.
The prospectors also introduced prostitutes and exploited Yanomami casual attitude on sex by offering women food or weapons for their husbands in exchange for sex. Venereal disease spread quickly.
Alcohol given to Indians by the miners, are often mixed with their own traditional drinks to create concoctions potent enough to cause death. The men get far more inebriated than before, and alcohol exacerbates their proclivity to violence, disrupting families, increasing feuds and incidences of serious injury.
FUNAI (Brazil's Indian Protection Agency) officials have said that the introduction of prostitution, diseases, and alcohol has been a deliberate attempt to decimate the Yanomami.
Mining operation destroyed forest land, polluted streams, and the noise from generators and supply planes scared away game. The High pressure hoses washed away river banks, silted the rivers and destroyed spawning grounds. Mercury, used to separate the gold from soil was dumped carelessly into the river.
Several Yanomami have been murdered.
In 1988 Brazil ratified a new constitution that guaranteed the right in indigenous peoples but failed to enforce its fiat. The invasion into Yanomami territory by illegal loggers and miners continued unabated.
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