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Vaccines containing thiomersal as a preservative, such as diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis vaccine and influenza vaccine, were excluded from the list of banned products in the Convention, partly in light of the extensive studies supporting the safety of minute amounts (<50 ?g per dose) of thiomersal,10 but also because of the population-level risks of removing thiomersal.11 Removing thiomersal from vaccines would have serious repercussions for the global supply of vaccines--particularly for resource-poor countries.12 Replacing the present multidose vaccine vials that need the preservative with single dose vials that do not is estimated to increase costs from 200% to more than 500%.11 Additionally, the increased number of vials would need expanded cold-chain capacity and would create far more waste.

This October, nations will gather in Japan to sign the Minamata convention, a treaty to address the toxic effects of mercury in the environment. The agreement will become binding once ratified by at least 50 nations. The convention is timely and welcome in that it places controls and limitations on products, processes, and industries that increase the level of exposure of people and the environment to mercury, a naturally occurring element. Mercury bioaccumulates in the form of methylmercury, a powerful neurotoxin that can affect wildlife, domestic animals, and humans alike. Symptoms of mercury poisoning can range from numbness in the hands and feet and muscle weakness in mild cases, to insanity and death.

This review covers the toxicology of mercury and its compounds. Special attention is paid to those forms of mercury of current public health concern. Human exposure to the vapor of metallic mercury dates back to antiquity but continues today in occupational settings and from dental amalgam. Health risks from methylmercury in edible tissues of fish have been the subject of several large epidemiological investigations and continue to be the subject of intense debate. Ethylmercury in the form of a preservative, thimerosal, added to certain vaccines, is the most recent form of mercury that has become a public health concern. The review leads to general discussion of evolutionary aspects of mercury, protective and toxic mechanisms, and ends on a note that mercury is still an \"element of mystery.\"

[4][,][5] Decades after industrial dumping ceased, thousands of survivors of these incidents are still suffering from a host of neurological symptoms, including tremors, dizziness, headaches, memory loss, and vision and hearing problems; the most severe cases also involve developmental disabilities, cognitive and motor dysfunction, and physical abnormalities. [...]that forecast does not account for climate change, which may complicate things, for instance by thawing northern tundra and releasing long-stored mercury back into circulation. While hailing the convention as a landmark achievement, Harvard's Grandjean says he hopes countries will go beyond its mandates, particularly when it comes to protecting children's health with measures such as provision of dietary advice and routine screening of pregnant women for mercury exposure.

A 2002 analysis documented$54.9 billion in annual costs of environmentally mediated diseases in US children. However, few important changes in federal policy have been implemented to prevent exposures to toxic chemicals. We therefore updated and expanded the previous analysis and found that the costs of lead poisoning, prenatal methylmercury exposure, childhood cancer, asthma, intellectual disability, autism, and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder were $ 76.6 billion in 2008. To prevent further increases in these costs, efforts are needed to institute premarket testing of new chemicals; conduct toxicity testing on chemicals already in use; reduce lead-based paint hazards; and curb mercury emissions from coal-fired power plants. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Although high mercury levels (> 100 μg/L in blood) have occasionally been reported in Canadian adults since the 1970s, mercury-induced signs and symptoms have never been comprehensively studied. Consequently, it is virtually impossible to establish diagnostic criteria for mercury intoxication at exposure levels relevant to northern Canada. Moreover, the evidence base for the health effects of long-term mercury exposure in Canadian adults is limited in scope and methodology. For example, among 135 Quebec Cree adults less than 40 years old, tremor was significantly associated with increasing mercury concentrations when measured by a general clinical examination but not by a specialized neurologic examination.40 The study was the result of a lawsuit, which may have compromised internal validity because participants with symptoms may have self-selected into the study. In a crosssectional study with a control group of nonexposed Japanese residents, First Nations adults from Grassy Narrows, Ontario, exhibited neurologic symptoms consistent with mercury poisoning, but the study lacked biomarker data of actual mercury exposure.41 Other cross-sectional studies conducted outside of Canada have also documented neurologic abnormalities in fisheating populations with comparable mercury exposure levels.42 In contrast to children, in whom the developing brain is a critical target of mercury toxicity, the cardiovascular system may be most sensitive in adults.1 Representative surveys of Nunavik Inuit and Cree adults documented associations between increasing blood mercury concentrations and risk markers for cardiovascular disease.43,44 Although the studies used crosssectional designs and had low response rates (< 50%), they had large samples (> 600) and adjusted extensively for confounders.43,44 It is possible that chronic conditions influence mercury metabolism and excretion, and thus affect exposure concentrations observed in crosssectional studies (e.g., reverse causality). In addition, cross-sectional studies cannot determine whether the observed mercury-induced cardiovascular damage occurred prenatally or postnatally. Two well-conducted nested case-control studies analyzing data from large prospective US cohorts found no association between mercury exposure and hypertension, nonfatal myocardial infarction, coronary artery disease or stroke in adults free of cardiovascular disease at baseline; however, exposure levels in these cohorts were lower than those typically observed in northern Canada.45,46 In the absence of prospective studies among adults with greater exposure levels, it may be justifiable to advise people with elevated cardiovascular risk to reduce mercury exposure as a precaution. We searched Embase, MEDLINE, Scopus and Google Scholar from 1994 to 2015 for English- and French-language epidemiologic studies conducted in Canada using the following search terms: \"mercury\" or \"methylmercury,\" and \"Canada,\" \"Nunavik,\" \"Nunavut,\" \"Northwest Territories,\" \"Yukon,\" \"Inuit,\" \"Cree,\" \"Dene,\" \"Metis,\" \"First Nations,\" \"indigenous,\" \"Aboriginal\" and \"fishermen.\" We conducted a cited reference search on all review articles on the topic. In addition, we reviewed books and technical reports from the National Academy of Sciences, the Arctic Monitoring and Assessment Programme and the World Health Organization.

Selenium (Se) is an essential trace element for humans. It is found in the enzyme glutathione peroxidase. This enzyme protects the organism against certain types of damage. Some data suggest that Se plays a role in the body’s metabolism of mercury (Hg). Selenium has in some studies been found to reduce the toxicity of Hg salts. Selenium and Hg bind in the body to each other. It is not totally clear what impact the amount of Se has in the human body on the metabolism and toxicity of prolonged Hg exposure.

According to a draftversion of UNEP's 2013 Global Mercury Report, about 6,500 tonnes of mercury was emitted into the air in 2010. Common measures for controlling air pollution have the potential to reduce mercury emissions from coal plants by about 36%, \"but to go further you'd need specific mercury-control technologies that can remove 90% of emissions, which are only available in developed countries\", says Wang Shuxiao, an environment scientist at Tsinghua University in Beijing, who is part of the Chinese delegation.

Endoplasmic reticulum (ER) stress preconditioning protects cells against methylmercury (MeHg) cytotoxicity by inducing integrated stress responses such as eIF2α phosphorylation, ATF4 accumulation, and nonsense-mediated mRNA decay (NMD) suppression. Here we demonstrated that ER stress preconditioning results in the upregulation of membrane transporters, leading to a decrease in intracellular mercury content. Our analyses showed that ER stress preconditioning upregulated the expression of methionine transporters that affect the cellular influx of MeHg, LAT1, LAT3, and SNAT2; and a membrane transporter that affects the efflux of MeHg, ABCC4, in MeHg-susceptible myogenic cells. Among these, ABCC4 transporter expression exhibited the greatest elevation. The functional significance of ABCC4 transporter in the efflux of MeHg was shown by the ABCC4 inhibition study. Additionally, we identified the role of phospho-eIF2α/ATF4 pathway in the upregulation of LAT1, SNAT2, and ABCC4 and the role of NMD suppression in LAT3 upregulation. Further, we detected that ER stress preconditioning amplified membrane transporter expression most likely through the translation of the upregulated mRNAs caused by ATF4-dependent transcription and NMD suppression. Taken together, these results suggested that the phospho-eIF2α/ATF4 pathway activation and NMD suppression may represent therapeutic targets for the alleviation of MeHg cytotoxicity by enhancing mercury efflux besides inducing protective stress responses.

Workers in the informal economy often incur exposure to well-documented occupational health hazards. Insufficient attention has been afforded to rigorously evaluating intervention programs to reduce the risks, especially in artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM). This systematic review, conducted as part of the World Health Organization's Global Plan of Action for Workers' Health, sought to assess the state of knowledge on occupational health programs and interventions for the informal artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) sector, an occupation which directly employs at least 50 million people. We used a comprehensive search strategy for four well-known databases relevant to health outcomes: PubMed, Engineering Village, OVID Medline, and Web of Science, and employed the PRISMA framework for our analysis. Ten studies met the inclusion criteria of a primary study focused on assessing the impact of interventions addressing occupational health concerns in ASGM. There were no studies evaluating or even identifying comprehensive occupational health and safety for this sector although target interventions addressing specific hazards exist. Major areas of intervention-education and introduction of mercury-reducing/eliminating technology were identified, and the challenges and limitations of each intervention taken into assessment. Even for these, however, there was a lack of standardization for measuring outcome or impact let alone long-term health outcomes for miners and mining communities. There is an urgent need for research on comprehensive occupational health programs addressing the array of hazards faced by artisanal and small-scale miners.