Signs and symptoms of mercury-exposed gold miners

OBJECTIVES: Gold miners use mercury to extract gold from ore adding liquid mercury to the milled gold-containing ore. This results in a mercury-gold compound, called amalgam. Miners smelt this amalgam to obtain gold, vaporizing it and finally inhaling the toxic mercury fumes. The objective was to merge and analyze data from different projects, to identify typical signs and symptoms of chronic inorganic mercury exposure. MATERIAL AND METHODS: test, linear trend test, Mann-Whitney test, Kruskal-Wallis test, correlation coefficient, Spearman's rho, and analysis of variance tests were used. An algorithm was used to define participants with chronic mercury intoxication. RESULTS: p < 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Chronic mercury intoxication, with tremor, ataxia and other neurological symptoms together with a raised body burden of mercury was clinically diagnosed in exposed people in artisanal small-scale mining areas. The mercury exposure needs to be urgently reduced. Health care systems need to be prepared for this emerging problem of chronic mercury intoxication among exposed people. Int J Occup Med Environ Health 2017;30(2):249-269.