Environmental Pollution by Mercury and Related Health Concerns: Renotice of a Silent Threat

Environmental pollution by mercury and related health concerns: renotice of a silent threat.

During the 1950s, while Japanese researchers were seeking for the cause of a strange and fatal neurologic disease spread in Minamata city, it seemed ludicrous that an element located in the period 6 and group 12 of the periodic table would be to blame. Mercury in its organic form, i.e. methyl mercury, was released from the wastewater of a chemical company; bio-accumulated in fi sh and shellfi s...

Environmental costs of mercury pollution.

Mercury (Hg) has been used for millennia in many applications, primarily in artisanal mining and as an electrode in the chlor-alkali industry. It is anthropogenically emitted as a pollutant from coal fired power plants and naturally emitted, primarily from volcanoes. Its unique chemical characteristics enable global atmospheric transport and it is deposited after various processes, ultimately e...

Traffic-Related Air Pollution: Legislation Versus Health and Environmental Effects

Pollution: a Silent Killer

Exposure to contaminants, generally called pollution, relates back to olden age when the environment was clean and free from chemicals. Knowledge of human exposure to environmental contaminants is an important component of environmental epidemiology, risk assessment, risk management, status and trends analysis. Exposure information provides a critical link between sources of contaminants, their...

Environmental mycobacteria: a threat to human health?

In many cases, bacterial pathogens are close relatives to nonpathogens. Pathogens seem to be limited lineages within nonpathogenic bacteria. Nonpathogenic isolates are generally more diverse and widespread in the environment and it is generally considered that environmental bacteria do not pose a risk to human health as clinical isolates do; this may not be the case with mycobacteria, but envir...