Impacto fisiopatológico, ambiental y biomarcadores de estrés oxidativo asociados a la exposición crónica al mercurio debido a la explotación artesanal y a pequeña escala del oro: revisión de la literatura

Abstract

Artisanal and small-scale mining (ASM) uses mercury (Hg) as a raw material for gold extraction by amalgamation, which constitutes a risk to human health and the environment. Thus, in the present work, a systematic review of the available literature of the last 10 years was carried out, by collecting articles from digital databases; to describe the pathophysiological alterations, environmental impact and biomarkers of oxidative stress related to chronic exposure to Hg in ASM. The results showed that the main pathophysiological alterations caused by chronic exposure to Hg in the mining population and surrounding the extraction area were neurological, renal and hematological. In the environment, it was also identified that Hg can affect the air, water and fish, which are part of the diet of the non-occupational population. In addition, indicators of overexposure and Hg contamination were calculated, where Africa reached the highest values respect to other continents, obtaining overexposure values of 77.27% and contamination values of 98.58% in air samples and 98.81% in water samples. For mercury exposure, the determination of oxidative stress biomarkers such as reduced glutathione (GSH), glutathione S-transferase (GST) and malondialdehyde (MDA) has been suggested, so the results showed that GSH is the most reported, whose correlation was negative and statistically significant (β= -0.20; p>0.05). Therefore, it is recommended that the Ecuadorian government encourage the implementation of informative talks on the consequences of Hg use and the application of alternative techniques for gold mining.