Human Biomonitoring Data from Mercury Exposed Miners in Six Artisanal Small-Scale Gold Mining Areas in Asia and Africa

Abstract

Abstract:Objectives: In artisanal small-scale gold mining (ASGM) areas in many developing countries, mercury (Hg) is used to extract gold from ore. Data of 1250 participants from Indonesia, Mongolia, Philippines, Tanzania, and Zimbabwe were combined to analyze the relation between exposure in ASGM areas and body burden. Methods: Four groups were selected relating to their intensity of contact with mercury: (i) a non-exposed control group; (ii) a low exposed group with participants only living in mining areas, but not working as miners; (iii) a medium exposed group, miners living in exposed areas and working with mercury without smelting amalgam; and (iv) a high OPEN ACCESSMinerals 2011, 1 123 exposed group, miners living in exposed areas and smelting amalgam. Results: Compared to the non-exposed control group, participants living and/ or miners working in highly exposed areas have significantly higher concentration of total mercury in urine, hair and blood (p-value < 0.001). The median mercury value in urine in the control group is <0.2 µg/L. In the high exposed group of amalgam smelters, the median in urine is 12.0 µg/L. The median in blood in the control group is <0.93 µg/L. The median level in blood of the high exposed group is 7.56 µg/L. The median for mercury in hair samples from the control group is 0.21 µg/g. In the high exposed group the median hair concentration is 2.4 µg/g hair. Mercury levels also differ considerably between the countries, reflecting a diverse background burden due to different fish eating habits and different work place methods. Conclusions: A high percentage of exposed individuals had levels above threshold values. These high levels of mercury are likely to be related with serious health problems.

Signs and symptoms of mercury-exposed gold miners

“…To compare normal-distributed metric Human Biomonitoring Commission [46,47]. The selection of threshold values applied for this study was discussed in our former papers [16,19,48]. The HBM values were recently updated, including the reference values [49].…”

“…Quality controls with reference samples were continuously achieved to guarantee the precision of the results. An extensive article on the results of our human biomonitoring data has been already published, and this article contains more detailed information on the laboratory methods [16] as well as our former country-related articles [17][18][19][20]44]. The limit of detection (LOD) for urine analysis was 0.1 μg/l for the controls from Mongolia, 0.2 μg/l for…”

“…A data bank including all our project data was created and used for this analysis [16]. Data from different projects were pooled: from the Global Mercury Project (GMP) data from the Philippines, Indonesia, Zimbabwe and Tanzania; from World Health Organization (WHO) projects data from Mongolia and from a university project Ludwig-Maximilians University Munich, Germany (LMU) data from Zimbabwe in 2006.…”

“…25 of these workers were found to be intoxicated. Small-scale mining is a serious health hazard for amalgam burners" [16].…”

Neurological Status Disturbances Caused by Mercury Exposures from Artisanal Gold Mining Area in West Aceh, Aceh Province

“…Several research related to the impact of the use of mercury in artisanal gold mining had been done around the world ( [5], [6], [7], [8], [9]). In Indonesia, research on artisanal gold mining had been conducted ( [10], [11], [12], [13], [14]) but it is still limited on research topic related to the impact of mercury on neurological disturbances.…”