title: Human exposure to mercury in San Jorge river basin, Colombia (South America).
abstract: During May-September 1999 human hair samples were collected from the village of Caimito, a fishing community of the state of Sucre (Colombia), in the San Jorge River basin area, and analyzed for total mercury (t-Hg) by cold vapor atomic absorption spectroscopy. T-Hg was measured in both male and female people aged 15-65 years, whose diet mainly consists of fish collected in nearby marshes. Average hair t-Hg concentration in people from Caimito was 4.91 +/- 0.55 microg/g (n = 94), similar to the value previously detected in fishermen living in the gold mining area, 50 km east. Males had similar t-Hg concentrations (4.31 +/- 0.42 microg/g; n = 56) to females (5.78 +/- 1.21 microg/g; n = 38) and there was no difference in t-Hg levels between groups of different age. Mercury content in hair was weakly but significantly associated (R = 0.20, P = 0.05) with fish consumption.
authors.affiliation: Environmental and Computational Chemistry Group, Universidad de Cartagena, Colombia. jesusolivero@yahoo.com
authors.forename: Jesus
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Olivero
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Johnson
authors.forename: Eduardo
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Arguello
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D000818:Animals; D003105:Colombia; D004032:Diet; D004781:Environmental Exposure; D005260:Female; D005399:Fishes; D006197:Hair / Q000737:chemistry; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008628:Mercury / Q000032:analysis*; D008875:Middle Aged; D012016:Reference Values; D013054:Spectrophotometry, Atomic
chemical_list: D008628:Mercury