OBJECTIVES Despite restrictions, mercury continues to pose a health concern. Mercury has the ability to deposit in most parts of the body and can cause a wide range of unspecific symptoms leading to diagnostic mistakes. METHODS AND RESULTS We report the case of severe mercury vapour poisoning after occupational exposure in a chloralkali plant worker that resulted in life-threatening respirato...

background : the present study was undertaken to ascertain whether (or not) long term occupational exposure to low (sub-tlv levels) atmospheric concentrations of chlorine gas was associated with any significant decrements in the parameters of pulmonary function and/or  increased prevalence of respiratory symptoms. methods : in this retrospective cohort study that was performed in 2012, 54 worke...

Bitterfeld (Germany) was a major site of chemical production in the former German Democratic Republic with chloralkali electrolysis as the basic process. Effluents were dumped via the creek Spittelwasser into the rivers Mulde and Elbe. Despite the fact that the chloralkali industry is known as a possible source of polychlorinated naphthalenes (PCNs), to date no data about PCN pollution in the r...

Mercury and radionuclides (natural U and its decay series products and artificial 137Cs) were measured in sediments of the Ka{tela Bay (eastern Adriatic coast) in the vicinity of a former chloralkali plant. The depth distributions of radionuclides and mercury revealed that sediments in front of the factory represent a mixture of natural sediment and coal ash originating from the coal used in th...

Sedimentation rates and mixing depths have been estimated from the application of a two-layer biodiffusion model to 210Pb profiles in sediment cores collected in the Laurentian Trough in the Estuary and Gulf of St. Lawrence. Sedimentation rates decrease exponentially with distance seaward from 0.70 cm yr21 (0.47 g cm22 yr21) near the head of the Trough to 0.04 cm yr21 (0.03 g cm22 yr21) in the ...

OBJECTIVE To reconstruct historical workplace exposure to mercury (Hg) from 1956 to 1994 at a large chloralkali factory for use in a current epidemiology study of the factory. METHODS All job activities of the employees were classified into one of 16 exposure categories, and the dates of changes in the processes were identified. Exposures to Hg for each job category, at each period of the pla...

A mercury-resistant bacterial strain which is able to reduce ionic mercury to metallic mercury was used to remediate in laboratory columns mercury-containing wastewater produced during electrolytic production of chlorine. Factory effluents from several chloralkali plants in Europe were analyzed, and these effluents contained total mercury concentrations between 1.6 and 7.6 mg/liter and high chl...