Risk Factors for Mercury Exposure of Children in a Rural Mining Town in Northern Chile
Open Access
- 20 November 2013
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Public Library of Science (PLoS) in PLOS ONE
- Vol. 8 (11), e79756
- https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0079756
Abstract
Traditional 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. Using 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. The 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. Mercury 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.Keywords
This publication has 24 references indexed in Scilit:
- Analysis by Categorizing or Dichotomizing Continuous Variables Is Inadvisable: An Example from the Natural History of Unruptured AneurysmsAmerican Journal Of Neuroradiology, 2011
- Multiple Imputation for Missing Data: Fully Conditional Specification Versus Multivariate Normal ImputationAmerican Journal of Epidemiology, 2010
- Health assessment of artisanal gold miners in IndonesiaScience of The Total Environment, 2010
- Missing Data Analysis Using Multiple ImputationCirculation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes, 2010
- Mercury in human brain, blood, muscle and toenails in relation to exposure: an autopsy studyEnvironmental Health, 2007
- Review: A gentle introduction to imputation of missing valuesJournal of Clinical Epidemiology, 2006
- Toenail mercury and dietary fish consumptionJournal of Exposure Science & Environmental Epidemiology, 2006
- Mercury exposure in children: a reviewToxicology and Applied Pharmacology, 2004
- Methylmercury neurotoxicity in Amazonian children downstream from gold mining.Environmental Health Perspectives, 1999
- Multiple Imputation after 18+ YearsJournal of the American Statistical Association, 1996