Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways: Get help with access Institutional accessĪccess to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. In it he outlined the health hazards associated with various chemicals, dust, and metals encountered by those working in 52 different occupations, including the miners who worked in the mercury mines. In 1700 he wrote the first book on the subject: De Morbis Artificum Diatriba. That physician was the surgeon Bernardino Ramazzini (1633–1714), who is today regarded as the founder of occupational and industrial medicine. Indeed the campaign against mercury really started 300 years ago when an Italian physician was the first to become interested in the link between occupation and illness. Yet it was a long struggle to make people aware of the dangers this metal posed, and along the way there were some major examples of exposure involving hundreds of thousands of individuals, many of whom had their lives made wretched by mercury. Monitoring those exposed to mercury in their employment can be done via their urine or blood. Most of these occupations no longer use mercury, and in those that do it is strictly controlled so that the risks are now negligible. The groups of workers most at risk from chronic mercury poisoning were gilders, hat makers, dentists, those in the electrical industries – and detectives. More serious were the psychological symptoms such as irritability, depression, and a paranoid belief that other people were persecuting them, all of which came as a result of mercury seeping into the brain. Those affected suffered from the physical symptoms of fatigue, general weakness, and a tremor of the hands, to the extent that their handwriting became spidery, and these symptoms were due to the effects on the central nervous system. Chronic mercury poisoning used to be an occupational hazard for many employees. Large doses deliberately given will be the topic of the next chapter. It is the former type of poisoning that this chapter is about. There are two kinds of mercury poisoning: chronic poisoning in which the body is subjected to regular small doses of mercury which exceed the amount it can excrete every day, and acute poisoning, in which a person is exposed to a life-threatening dose.
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