Mercury Exposure Through Gold Extraction: Varied Signs and Symptoms of Toxicity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17140/TFMOJ-1-103Keywords:
Mercury, Toxicity, Gold Extraction, Varied SignsAbstract
A 48-year-old male called the poison control center noting his “skin is starting to peel off”. He stated ten days prior, a container fell from a shelf and spilled approximately 100 milliliters of elemental mercury used for gold extraction. Because it was felt there was a still valuable amount of gold in the mercury, he explored the silvery material for any recoverable specs of gold. Once complete, he used a vacuum to remove the mercury, and swept the remainder under a rug.
References
Tomicic C, Vernez D, Belem T, Berode M. Human mercury exposure associated with small-scale gold mining in Burkina Faso. Int Arch Occup Environ Health. 2011; 84(5): 539-546. doi: 10.1007/s00420-011-0615-x
Wu X, Cobbina SJ, Mao G, Xu H, Zhang Z, Yang L. A review of toxicity and mechanisms of individual and mixtures of heavy metals in the environment. Environ Sci Pollut Res Int. 2016; 23(9): 8244-8259. doi: 10.1007/s11356-016-6333-x
Boyd AS, Seger D, Vannucci S, Langley M, Abraham JL, King LE, Jr. Mercury exposure and cutaneous disease. J Am Acad Der-matol. 2000; 43(1 Pt 1): 81-90. doi: 10.1067/mjd.2000.106360
Koirala S, Leinenkugel K. Notes from the field: Acute mer-cury poisoning after home gold and silver smelting--iowa, 2014. MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep. 2015; 64(49): 1365-1356. Web site. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm 6449a4.htm. Accessed July 10, 2016 Toxicol Forensic Med Open J
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
All content published in Toxicology and Forensic Medicine (TFM) is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). This license allows anyone to copy, distribute, transmit, and adapt the work — including for commercial purposes — provided appropriate credit is given to the original author(s) and source.