Human exposure to mercury: a critical assessment of the evidence of adverse health effects.
Human exposure to mercury: a critical assessment of the evidence of adverse health effects.
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DOI：
10.1080/00984108.1996.11667600
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发表时间：
1996-10
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
Hope E. Ratcliffe;G. Swanson;L. Fischer
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
Hope E. Ratcliffe;G. Swanson;L. Fischer
汞在环境中无处不在、其全球大气循环以及其对人类的毒性（其水平接近于部分人口所经历的接触水平，令人不舒服）是目前与这种污染物相关的一些担忧。本次审查的目的是严格评估已发表的涉及人类接触汞和相关健康结果的报告的科学质量，以帮助评估这种化学品的风险。对涉及人类接触汞的科学文献进行了全面审查，并使用一组定义的标准对每篇出版物进行了评估，这些标准被认为是流行病学和毒理学研究的标准。主要以案例研究的形式报告了高浓度汞暴露的严重影响，有时甚至是致命的影响。 20 世纪 50 年代日本水俣市和 1971-1972 年伊拉克发生的灾难清楚地表明，成人和子宫内暴露的婴儿摄入甲基汞都会对神经系统产生影响。尽管研究设计存在局限性，但这些影响令人信服地与甲基汞的摄入有关。几项进行良好的研究调查了低于伊拉克事件中甲基汞水平的影响，但尚未提供明确的影响证据。因此，根据伊拉克数据构建的剂量反应曲线的下端仍需要确认。对工作场所汞暴露的研究主要是元素汞或无机汞，在相对较低的暴露水平下观察到的影响主要是神经和肾脏方面的影响。几项研究调查了与牙科汞合金相关的影响，但由于方法缺陷而被评为不确定。在我们的总体评估中，110 项职业研究中的 29 项和 54 项在自然环境中发生暴露的研究中的 20 项至少提供了暴露相关效应的暗示性证据。
The ubiquitous nature of mercury in the environment, its global atmospheric cycling, and its toxicity to humans at levels that are uncomfortably close to exposures experienced by a proportion of the population are some of the current concerns associated with this pollutant. The purpose of this review is to critically evaluate the scientific quality of published reports involving human exposures to mercury and associated health outcomes as an aid in the risk evaluation of this chemical. A comprehensive review of the scientific literature involving human exposures to mercury was performed and each publication evaluated using a defined set of criteria that are considered standards in epidemiologic and toxicologic research. Severe, sometimes fatal, effects of mercury exposure at high levels were primarily reported as case studies. The disasters in Minamata, Japan, in the 1950s and in Iraq in 1971-1972 clearly demonstrated neurologic effects associated with ingestion of methylmercury both in adults and in infants exposed in utero. The effects were convincingly associated with methylmercury ingestion, despite limitations of the study design. Several well-conducted studies have investigated the effects of methylmercury at levels below those in the Iraq incident but have not provided clear evidence of an effect. The lower end of the dose-response curve constructed from the Iraq data therefore still needs to be confirmed. The studies of mercury exposure in the workplace were mainly of elemental or inorganic mercury, and effects that were observed at relatively low exposure levels were primarily neurologic and renal. Several studies have investigated effects associated with dental amalgam but have been rated as inconclusive because of methodologic deficiencies. In our overall evaluation, 29 of 110 occupational studies and 20 of 54 studies where exposure occurred in the natural environment provided at least suggestive evidence of an exposure-related effect.