Abstract
The development of the environmental mercury problem and the toxicity of mercury and its compounds have received attention in numerous recent reviews (27, 28, 29, 39, 42, 43, 48, 76, 81, 98, 103, 125). Mercury and cinnabar have been known since at least 1500 B.C. and mercury was a familiar substance by the first century B.C. (35, 75). The toxicity of mercury was mentioned by a number of ancient writers and the occupational hazards of mercury were described in detail by Paracelsus in 1533 (41, 53). Ramazzini (97), who in 1700 published De Morbis Artificium, the first comprehensive treatise on occupational diseases, vividly describes the maladies afflicting miners, gilders, mirror-makers and physicians who were exposed to mercury in the course of their work. Although there is a continuing problem of occupational exposure to inorganic mercury (33, 39), possible effects on broader segments of the population due to the widespread dispersal of mercury in the environment has recently become the focus of concern. The Minamata disaster in the 1950’s, in which forty-six deaths occurred among the 121 inhabitants poisoned by methylmercury which had accumulated in the fish of Minamata Bay as the result of the mercury discharged from a chemical plant employing a mercury catalyst (59, 60, 77), dramatically exposed the potential hazards to the general population.
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