Ecobreves – AMAZON: Fight Against Mercury

By IPS Correspondents and - - Reprint | | Print |

RIO DE JANEIRO, Feb 14 2005 (IPS) - Mercury in the rivers of the Amazon region is threatening the environment and human health, says the Amazonian Cooperation Treaty Organization (OTCA), which is discussing action plans for curbing contamination from this heavy metal in the eight countries with Amazonian territory. In 2002, Brazil's Health Ministry examined 1,666 newborns in Itaituba, a municipality of the northern state of Pará, and found that 1,000 of them, or 60 percent, had high levels of mercury in their blood. Mercury affects the nervous system, the kidneys, and joints.

Brazil's environment minister Marina Silva herself suffers the effects of mercury contamination during her childhood, growing up in the Amazon.

Informal, unregulated gold mining, which was widespread in Itaituba, is the main source of mercury in the rivers, and is concentrated in the meat of fish, a food staple of the human inhabitants of the Amazon Basin.