Neurological and neuropsychological deterioration in artisanal gold miners from the town of Andacollo, Chile

Corral, Sebastián; Saez, Daniel Martinez; Lam, Gislaine; Lillo, Patricia; Sandoval, Rodrigo; Lancellotti, Domingo; Radon, Katja; Zúñiga, Liliana; Moraga, Daniel; Pancetti, Floria

doi:10.1080/02772248.2013.766191

Cited by 16 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…This detailed article summarized the results from 26 studies, showing that the exposure to inorganic Hg vapor is high, and that toxic effects have to be considered. Some relevant papers in different countries with ASGM showed that Hg levels in any analyzed biomarker were higher compared to control groups or reference values, and in some studies clinical symptoms or negative results for subclinical parameters were identified [7,8,13,14,26,28,29,31,32,[53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60]. These results are very similar to our results.…”

Section: Literaturesupporting

confidence: 90%

Signs and symptoms of mercury-exposed gold miners

Blüml

Bernaudat

Siebert

et al. 2017

Int J Occup Med Environ Health

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Section: Literaturesupporting

confidence: 90%

Signs and symptoms of mercury-exposed gold miners

Blüml

Bernaudat

Siebert

et al. 2017

Int J Occup Med Environ Health

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“…The Hg vapors are thereafter effectively taken up by the blood stream and can further easily pass the blood-brain barrier to accumulate particularly in the cerebellum where it can affect protein synthesis, destroy membranes, and denature intracellular and cytoskeleton proteins, and enzymes [6] . Subsequent neurological abnormalities have already been documented among gold miners [7] . However, the adverse effects may be especially harmful for the developing organism of a child [4] , [8] – [13] .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Risk Factors for Mercury Exposure of Children in a Rural Mining Town in Northern Chile

Ohlander¹,

Huber²,

Schomaker

et al. 2013

PLoS ONE

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ObjectiveTraditional gold mining is associated with mercury exposure. Especially vulnerable to its neurotoxic effects is the developing nervous system of a child. We aimed to investigate risk factors of mercury exposure among children in a rural mining town in Chile.MethodsUsing a validated questionnaire distributed to the parents of the children, a priori mercury risk factors, potential exposure pathways and demographics of the children were obtained. Mercury levels were measured through analyzing fingernail samples. Logistic regression modeling the effect of risk factors on mercury levels above the 75th percentile were made, adjusted for potential confounders.ResultsThe 288 children had a mean age of 9.6 years (SD = 1.9). The mean mercury level in the study population was 0.13 µg/g (SD 0.11, median 0.10, range 0.001–0.86 µg/g). The strongest risk factor for children’s odds of high mercury levels (>75th percentile, 0.165 µg/g) was to play inside a house where a family member worked with mercury (OR adjusted 3.49 95% CI 1.23–9.89). Additionally, children whose parents worked in industrial gold mining had higher odds of high mercury levels than children whose parents worked in industrial copper mining or outside mining activities.ConclusionMercury exposure through small-scale gold mining might affect children in their home environments. These results may further help to convince the local population of banning mercury burning inside the households.

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“…Finding that average airborne mercury concentrations in Segovia are possibly high enough to be hazardous to human health is unsurprising given that even non-miners exhibit symptoms of mercury poisoning (Corral et al 2013, Garcia et al 2015. This corroborating epidemiological evidence suggests that it is more appropriate to directly compare short term averages that are heavily weighted toward daytime values with annual average health standards, instead of recalibrating the averages to account for nighttime concentration lows.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%