Title: (Reports 10 of 12) Issue: Magico-religious and ethnomedical mercury use
Author:
Section/SPIG: Environment
Issue Date:
Evidence suggests magico-religious and ethnomedical mercury use within some Caribbean and Latino communities poses a significant environmental health threat. In particular, when elemental mercury is sprinkled on floors of homes in the belief that it attracts good and repels evil, it can easily evolve toxic levels of mercury vapor for periods of 15 years or more, resulting in second-hand exposure to subsequent occupants.
During the past decade several pilot studies have associated these esoteric practices with elevated mercury levels in the hair of Haitian populations in French Guiana, and in urine of Latino children in the Bronx, N.Y. Researchers have detected elevated mercury vapor levels in Latino dwellings in Union City, N.J. and West New York, N.J., and in wastewater emanating from Latino communities in New York City. Surveys have demonstrated widespread ritualistic mercury sales and use in Lawrence, Mass, and Chicago. Since 2001, Environmental Health Perspectives has published three papers on this issue. In 1996 AJPH published findings suggesting that yearly esoteric mercury sales (of 9 gram mean weight) in the Bronx, N.Y. ranged between 25,000 and 150,000, with some 30 percent destined to be sprinkled on floors. A survey in heavily Dominican Lawrence, Mass., found 12 percent of respondents said they sprinkled mercury in or around a child's crib or bed.
Both the Office of Civil Rights of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and the U.S. EPA's Office of Inspector General are currently investigating governmental failure to adequately address this issue.
The environmental health community has essentially neglected to substantively assess these domestic mercury exposures and their health effects, in large part due to the 'political incorrectness' of this issue. The affected communities have been reluctant to advocate on their own behalf for similar reasons.
It is high time that this issue is seriously investigated.
For interested Section members, further information and links to the references in peer-reviewed journals mentioned above, and others, are available at< www.mercurypoisoningproject.org> and/or from contact person for this submission at the Mercury Poisoning Prevention Project.