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Chemical Nanosensors
Published in Vinod Kumar Khanna, Nanosensors, 2021
What is the reason for the notoriety of mercury? Mercury is a widespread, dangerous global pollutant. Mercury poisoning, also known as mercuralism, is the phenomenon of intoxication by contact with mercury. Mercury poisoning from amalgam dental fillings is the root cause of a multitude of difficult-to-diagnose and often life-threatening diseases.
Toxicology
Published in W. David Yates, Safety Professional’s Reference and Study Guide, 2020
Mercury can cause peripheral neuropathy and neuropsychiatric disorders after chronic exposure. Inhalation of elemental mercury vapor is the most common exposure route leading to occupational mercury poisoning. The key to preventing chronic mercury poisoning is to reduce spills and to clean up ones that occur. Other forms of mercury poisoning follow the ingestion of inorganic mercury and organic mercury compounds.
Endangered Planet
Published in Maude Barlow, Tony Clarke, BLUE GOLD, 2017
Dams are built for several reasons: to provide hydroelectricity; to facilitate navigation; to create reservoirs for cities and agricultural irrigation; and to control flooding. Once the symbol of human mastery over Nature, large dams have fallen into disrepute as evidence of their massive ecological impact steadily mounts. As Patrick McCully describes so thoroughly in his 1996 book, Silenced Rivers, the problem with reservoirs is that they require land to be flooded and submerged. The drowning of land vegetation creates the habitat required by the bacteria that absorb any mercury that happens to be in the soil. The reservoirs convert this mercury into a form that fish can ingest and mercury then enters the food chain. It bioaccumulates, and can be many times more lethal by the time humans eat it than in its original form. This is how the Cree of northern Quebec came to have such high levels of mercury in their systems. When they ate fish from the waters diverted for the massive James Bay hydroelectric project, 64 percent of the Cree in the area took in unsafe levels of this poisonous element. Mercury poisoning can cause blindness, reproductive failure, and brain damage.
Mercury methylation by anaerobic microorganisms: A review
Published in Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, 2019
Ming Ma, Hongxia Du, Dingyong Wang
Mercury (Hg) is a naturally occurring element, a pervasive global pollutant released from both natural and anthropogenic sources (Benoit, Gilmour, Mason, Riedel, & Riedel, 1998; Lin, Yee, & Barkay, 2012; Tamashiro, Akagi, Arakaki, Futatsuka, & Roht, 1984), the latter has resulted in large amounts of Hg entering into the environment (Abelson 1970; Boening 2000). Mercury poisoning incidents had been reported in many countries since the first record in Minamata Bay, Japan in the 1950s, which contributed to the deaths of hundreds of people (Tamashiro et al., 1984). Since then, the harm of Hg pollution to mankind has gradually attracted the attention of scientists around the world. Nowadays, Hg has been identified as a global contaminant because it can transport long distance in the atmosphere, leading to elevated Hg concentrations in fish not only in Hg-contaminated habitats, but also in virtually unpolluted sites (Zhang, Pan, Kang, Zhu, & Wang, 2014). Moreover, Hg can be bioaccumulated and biomagnified in the food chains of aquatic ecosystems, causing seriously threat to the health of humans and wildlife populations (Beckers & Rinklebe, 2017; Boening, 2000).
Progress on electrochemical sensors for the determination of heavy metal ions from contaminated water
Published in Journal of the Chinese Advanced Materials Society, 2018
Xiangzi Dai, Shuping Wu, Songjun Li
Generally, heavy metals are defined as that the metal density is more than 4.5 g/cm3, including copper (Cu), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni), gold (Au), arsenic (As), zinc (Zn) and so on. In the environmental pollution field, heavy metal are refer to highly toxic heavy elements, like mercury (Hg), cadmium (Cd), lead (Pb), chromium (Cr) and metallic arsenic (As). Mostly heavy metals can cause serious harmful effects on humans and environment due to their high toxic and enhanced reactivity.[1] With the development of industrial and agricultural manufacture, heavy metal contamination has been becoming a serious problem. The heavy metal pollutants in the environment are difficult to degrade by nature and will accumulate in vivo of animals and plants. Though only small amounts of heavy metals are consumed, when larger animals that are higher up in the food chain eat the bottom feeders, a higher concentration of the toxin is then present in their body. This food chain reaction is called biomagnification. Since humans are at the top in the food chain, humans are extremely affected by biomagnification, making it a subtle yet dangerous problem.[2–4] The term has particular application to cadmium, mercury, lead, chromium and arsenic, all of which appear in the World Health Organisation's list of 10 chemicals of major public concern. For instance, Minamata disease is a neurological syndrome caused by severe mercury poisoning. Minamata disease patients have the clinical symptoms that include dementia, hand and foot facial paralysis, general muscle weakness, loss of peripheral vision, and damage to hearing and speech. In 1950s, a serious heavy metal pollution incident occurred in Japan caused more than 10 thousand people infected with Minamata disease which was arisen by organic mercury poisoning, and about 500 of them died.[5] Medical studies have proved that cadmium can cause itai-itai disease after it enters human bodies. The main effects of cadmium poisoning are week and brittle bones.[6,7] Lead is harmful to human nervous, digestive, cardiovascular, blood, kidney and other systems, and leads to anemia, caries polyneuritis, fetal malformation, etc. Children are extremely sensitive to the toxicity of lead, which can cause nervous system problems including vascular disorders and injuries in the head and spinal cord.[8] Contamination with high levels of arsenic is of concern because arsenic can cause many human health effects. Arsenic exposure affects virtually all organ systems including the cardiovascular, dermatologic, nervous, liver, kidney, gastro-intestinal and respiratory systems.