Hellcat
Registered
Mercury as folk potion sickens users, pollutes
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
By LINDY WASHBURN
STAFF WRITER
CARMINE GALASSO / THE RECORD
Felix Mota, a voodoo priest, says he quit selling azogue, or mercury, in his store, but many continue, unaware of its health risks.
The voodoo priest sits in a room lighted by burning candles, where masks and saints, liquor bottles, and a bowl of money are arranged on altars. Azogue is a toxic and dangerous substance, he begins.
He explains its allures: It speeds the magical effects of spells cast for the loveless, the luckless, and the sick, some believe. It is a talisman to the gambler, a protector against the evil
eye. Some sprinkle it in rooms, cars - even baby cribs - for protection.
Azogue is quicksilver - mercury.
It is poison.
It is a poison that lowers children's academic performance an
d in
creases their behav
ior problems. In Hudson County, it contaminated the air in one in five apartment buildings surveyed for a recent study. So many people have been exposed to it that health officials have detected it in the sewage flowing into New York Harbor.
MERCURY POLLUTION:
Every lake and stream in New Jersey is tainted with mercury, forcing the state to warn people to limit the amount of fish they eat. Cutting mercury pollution from power plants, the main source of the contamination, has sparked a heated debate in Washington. How fish become tainted:
1. Coal-fired power plants release mercury (Hg) into the air.
2. Mercury can be carried hundreds of miles before falling to earth and settling in the sediment of lakes, rivers, ponds, and oceans.
3. Bacteria in
the sediments then convert it to methylmercury, which can be absorbed in the tissue of living things.
4. Plankton ingest the bacteria. Insects and small fish eat the plankton. The mercury increase
s in concen
tration as it works its way up t
he food chain.
5. Large predator fish such as bass, walleye, tuna, and swordfish can have levels of mercury one million times higher than the surrounding water.
6. More than 2 million lakes and 500,000 miles of rivers in the nation are tainted with mercury, and people are told to limit the consumption of certain fish from those waters.
7. Cooking or cleaning fish does not reduce mercury contamination.
8. Children born to mothers who have high mercury levels are slower to walk and talk and can suffer learning disabilities. The federal government estimates that 630,000 babies born every year in the United States may be at risk. In adults, mercury may increase the risk of heart attack and infertility and cause memory and concentration p
roblems.
Sources: National Wildlife Federation, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
And it is widely available in the botanicas,
or folk pharmacies
, of Latino and Caribbean communities in New J
ersey, where a tiny glass bottle containing up to 2 teaspoons usually sells for $3.
The voodoo priest stopped selling it three years ago. But elsewhere, "it sells a lot, I'm telling you," says Felix Mota, the priest and owner of St. Barbara Botanica in Passaic. "I used to order 10 or 12 dozen [vials], and it would be gone in less than two or three months."
Some experts say the widespread use of mercury for folk medicine and ritual among Hispanic and Haitian immigrants could end up costing millions of dollars - for the additional expense of educating affected children and cleaning up hundreds of contaminated apartments. In Passaic City, Hudson County, and New York City, the use of mercury is just beginnin
g to come to the attention of health officials.
"This is not an extremely common event," says Dr. Michael Gochfeld, the principal investigator of the New Jersey study. "But
it's not rare enough th
at we can be complacent."
A 2002 study found that indoor air samples in almost one-fi
fth of the 67 Hudson County apartment buildings tested had elevated levels of mercury and that nearly all of 22 Hudson County Santeria practitioners and botanica employees used mercury. Priests of Santeria, a religion practiced by some Cubans, and voodoo occasionally use mercury in rituals.
A follow-up study this year will systematically check the air inside apartments and hallways.
The ramifications could be explosive.
Mercury is a potent toxin - long-lasting, readily spread through droplets and evaporation, and easily absorbed through the lungs. If inhaled on the job, it is considered an occupational hazard for which evacuation and hazardous materials cleanup are requir
ed.
In adults, mercury exposure can cause personality changes, tremors, and damage to a person's lungs, kidneys, and stomach. In children, mercury vapors easily pass into the brain
and nervous system, causing perman
ent developmental problems. Children may be slow to walk and talk, less intelligent, and more susceptibl
e to autism and attention deficit disorder.
In buildings, contamination can last for a decade, as the mercury slowly evaporates. It is absorbed by porous surfaces: carpets, wood floors, even concrete.
Most exposure in humans occurs through the diet, by consuming fish with high levels of methylmercury, a mercury compound.
Arnold Wendroff, a medical sociologist who founded the Mercury Poisoning Project in Brooklyn, says state, federal, and local officials have failed to act on a problem that leads to millions of dollars in special-education costs and will eventually require the evacuation and cleanup of hundreds of apartments.
There is "a strong proba
bility that large populations are exposed to developmentally neurotoxic levels of mercury vapor in their dwellings," he says.
Much of the exposure is to people who have no ide
a that previous tenants sprinkled or spille
d mercury inside, he says.
"Once you throw that mercury on the floor, it's going to stay there for a decade," he says.
"The metal is absorbed by porous surfaces, and can only be removed by taking out carpet, wood flooring, and concrete to a thickness of half an inch.
"No one really wants to address this issue," Wendroff says, "given the enormity of the political and economic fallout."
The sale of mercury is legal as long as it is properly labeled as a hazardous substance. Sales in northern New Jersey have been driven underground, researchers say, because botanica owners think it is illegal or fear they will be held responsible for spills or harmful consequences.
Still, mercury is readily available. "People bu
y it a lot!" Mota says.
Researchers say mercury is used in two ways: as part of an organized religion, such as Santeria, Espiritismo, or voodoo, where priests imbue it
with spiritual power in certain rituals, or in cul
tural or superstitious practices in which people believe it brings good luck.
"People buy it to put in candles - candles for money, for love, to pray for somebody," Mota says
. He used to put a drop of mercury in perfume or bath oils, to spread over the body for good luck, but he doesn't anymore.
"I tell people, 'Don't use it. It's so dangerous.'"
One woman Mota treated six or seven years ago had swallowed mercury at the instruction of a santero, a Santeria priest, before she came to the United States.
Mota says he was recently offered a 10-pound jar of mercury, but he didn't want to repackage it himself. As a practicing voodoo priest and initiated santero, he's too busy with private consultations and
tarot readings for his patients. Besides, "Where would I do it? Here? At home where my kids are?"
In a 1996 survey by Montefiore Medical Center of 38 botanicas i
n the Bronx, researchers found that the stores sold a minim
um of 25,000 vials a year, nearly half a ton annually in that borough alone.
Urine testing of children who lived in that area found that five of 100 tested had elevated mercury levels - a percentage similar to the occurrence of lead p
oisoning in the same population. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is following up this year with a larger study, of 250 children living in northern Manhattan and Brooklyn.
A study of pollution in New York Harbor by the New York Academy of Sciences estimated that mercury from cultural and religious practices totaled about 400 kilograms, or 880 pounds, a year. That equals the amount produced by coal-fired power plants, which rank nationally as the largest unregulated source of mercury pollution.
Sewage coming
from a neighborhood in northeastern Manhattan showed excessive amounts of mercury, according to a new study by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Inhaled
mercury is usually excreted through urine and feces.
New J
ersey's study of botanicas and apartment buildings was initiated at the recommendation of Wendroff, who alerted the state Task Force on Mercury in 2001 about the widespread use of mercury among certain ethnic groups. Wendroff, a former junio
r high school science teacher in Brooklyn, remembers the day in 1990 when his interest in the subject began.
"I was teaching a chemistry lesson on mercury, and I asked the kids if they knew what it was used for," he says. "I expected them to say thermometers. One of the kids says, 'My mother uses it in Santeria.'"
The boy explained that she sprinkled it on the floor "to keep away the brujas," or witches. The boy knew the botanica where she bought it, and agreed to bring some t
o school. Two days later, the boy showed up with a capsule.
Wendroff subsequently realized that the boy showed some signs of mercury poisoning.
Occupational e
xposure to mercury - among hatters in 19th century London, for example - c
auses a syndrome called erethism, characterized by anorexia, irritability, short-term memory loss, and dislike of being observed. "This kid had all four of them," Wendroff says. "He would put his head on his desk and invert his loose-leaf notebook over it."
The New Jersey study emp
loyed a Santeria priest from New Mexico to interview practitioners in Hudson County. He reported:
A Colombian santera "lamented the fact that it's now more difficult to sell mercury ... [She] says that mercury made up an important part of her sales in the past. She has sold mercury to other Colombians, Mexicans, Cubans, and North Americans. She keeps it in her house rather than the botanica and prefers to sell larger quantities as opposed to
capsules."
In another shop, owned by a Cuban and Puerto Rican couple, "Mercury capsules are very cheap in this botanica ($1.50). Their logic
is that people won't report them if they get a bargain."
A Dom
inican santera "uses elemental mercury and red, yellow, and blue precipitados [mercury oxides] in secret Santeria rituals." She told the researcher that "elemental mercury could be sprinkled for good luck or could be placed in a water goblet [with water and camphor]."
Those interviewed "were unaware of the hazards of mercury," the report
says.
They knew it was "bad to touch or play with, [but] no one knew about the dangers of mercury vapors or the possible effects of long term exposure. The only 'hazard' they mentioned was the legal trouble they thought you could get into if you were caught with mercury."
The study also found mercury vapor was "significantly elevated" in 17 percent
of the apartment buildings tested, says Alan Stern, a co-author and head of the state Department of Environmental Protection's risk analysis bureau. The study di
dn't identify a cause. It may be due to cultural use or something as simple as breaki
ng a thermometer, he says.
Other studies have suggested that local laws be enacted to require that dwellings be tested for mercury - and buyers or tenants informed of the results - when they are sold, much as some states require radon or lead testing.
Routine testing of children's mercury levels, as they are currently tested for lead, may be a good idea in some locales, researchers say.
"We w
ant to protect people's health, and that's the bottom line," Stern says. The goal "is to convince people that this is not a smart and healthy thing to do. If we do this in a clumsy way and drive this underground, then we're not going to be helping anybody."
http://www.bergen.com/page.php?qstr=eXJpcn...2Y3dnF
lZUVFeXky
Tuesday, March 16, 2004
By LINDY WASHBURN
STAFF WRITER
CARMINE GALASSO / THE RECORD
Felix Mota, a voodoo priest, says he quit selling azogue, or mercury, in his store, but many continue, unaware of its health risks.
The voodoo priest sits in a room lighted by burning candles, where masks and saints, liquor bottles, and a bowl of money are arranged on altars. Azogue is a toxic and dangerous substance, he begins.
He explains its allures: It speeds the magical effects of spells cast for the loveless, the luckless, and the sick, some believe. It is a talisman to the gambler, a protector against the evil
eye. Some sprinkle it in rooms, cars - even baby cribs - for protection.
Azogue is quicksilver - mercury.
It is poison.
It is a poison that lowers children's academic performance an
d in
creases their behav
ior problems. In Hudson County, it contaminated the air in one in five apartment buildings surveyed for a recent study. So many people have been exposed to it that health officials have detected it in the sewage flowing into New York Harbor.
MERCURY POLLUTION:
Every lake and stream in New Jersey is tainted with mercury, forcing the state to warn people to limit the amount of fish they eat. Cutting mercury pollution from power plants, the main source of the contamination, has sparked a heated debate in Washington. How fish become tainted:
1. Coal-fired power plants release mercury (Hg) into the air.
2. Mercury can be carried hundreds of miles before falling to earth and settling in the sediment of lakes, rivers, ponds, and oceans.
3. Bacteria in
the sediments then convert it to methylmercury, which can be absorbed in the tissue of living things.
4. Plankton ingest the bacteria. Insects and small fish eat the plankton. The mercury increase
s in concen
tration as it works its way up t
he food chain.
5. Large predator fish such as bass, walleye, tuna, and swordfish can have levels of mercury one million times higher than the surrounding water.
6. More than 2 million lakes and 500,000 miles of rivers in the nation are tainted with mercury, and people are told to limit the consumption of certain fish from those waters.
7. Cooking or cleaning fish does not reduce mercury contamination.
8. Children born to mothers who have high mercury levels are slower to walk and talk and can suffer learning disabilities. The federal government estimates that 630,000 babies born every year in the United States may be at risk. In adults, mercury may increase the risk of heart attack and infertility and cause memory and concentration p
roblems.
Sources: National Wildlife Federation, New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection; U.S. Environmental Protection Agency
And it is widely available in the botanicas,
or folk pharmacies
, of Latino and Caribbean communities in New J
ersey, where a tiny glass bottle containing up to 2 teaspoons usually sells for $3.
The voodoo priest stopped selling it three years ago. But elsewhere, "it sells a lot, I'm telling you," says Felix Mota, the priest and owner of St. Barbara Botanica in Passaic. "I used to order 10 or 12 dozen [vials], and it would be gone in less than two or three months."
Some experts say the widespread use of mercury for folk medicine and ritual among Hispanic and Haitian immigrants could end up costing millions of dollars - for the additional expense of educating affected children and cleaning up hundreds of contaminated apartments. In Passaic City, Hudson County, and New York City, the use of mercury is just beginnin
g to come to the attention of health officials.
"This is not an extremely common event," says Dr. Michael Gochfeld, the principal investigator of the New Jersey study. "But
it's not rare enough th
at we can be complacent."
A 2002 study found that indoor air samples in almost one-fi
fth of the 67 Hudson County apartment buildings tested had elevated levels of mercury and that nearly all of 22 Hudson County Santeria practitioners and botanica employees used mercury. Priests of Santeria, a religion practiced by some Cubans, and voodoo occasionally use mercury in rituals.
A follow-up study this year will systematically check the air inside apartments and hallways.
The ramifications could be explosive.
Mercury is a potent toxin - long-lasting, readily spread through droplets and evaporation, and easily absorbed through the lungs. If inhaled on the job, it is considered an occupational hazard for which evacuation and hazardous materials cleanup are requir
ed.
In adults, mercury exposure can cause personality changes, tremors, and damage to a person's lungs, kidneys, and stomach. In children, mercury vapors easily pass into the brain
and nervous system, causing perman
ent developmental problems. Children may be slow to walk and talk, less intelligent, and more susceptibl
e to autism and attention deficit disorder.
In buildings, contamination can last for a decade, as the mercury slowly evaporates. It is absorbed by porous surfaces: carpets, wood floors, even concrete.
Most exposure in humans occurs through the diet, by consuming fish with high levels of methylmercury, a mercury compound.
Arnold Wendroff, a medical sociologist who founded the Mercury Poisoning Project in Brooklyn, says state, federal, and local officials have failed to act on a problem that leads to millions of dollars in special-education costs and will eventually require the evacuation and cleanup of hundreds of apartments.
There is "a strong proba
bility that large populations are exposed to developmentally neurotoxic levels of mercury vapor in their dwellings," he says.
Much of the exposure is to people who have no ide
a that previous tenants sprinkled or spille
d mercury inside, he says.
"Once you throw that mercury on the floor, it's going to stay there for a decade," he says.
"The metal is absorbed by porous surfaces, and can only be removed by taking out carpet, wood flooring, and concrete to a thickness of half an inch.
"No one really wants to address this issue," Wendroff says, "given the enormity of the political and economic fallout."
The sale of mercury is legal as long as it is properly labeled as a hazardous substance. Sales in northern New Jersey have been driven underground, researchers say, because botanica owners think it is illegal or fear they will be held responsible for spills or harmful consequences.
Still, mercury is readily available. "People bu
y it a lot!" Mota says.
Researchers say mercury is used in two ways: as part of an organized religion, such as Santeria, Espiritismo, or voodoo, where priests imbue it
with spiritual power in certain rituals, or in cul
tural or superstitious practices in which people believe it brings good luck.
"People buy it to put in candles - candles for money, for love, to pray for somebody," Mota says
. He used to put a drop of mercury in perfume or bath oils, to spread over the body for good luck, but he doesn't anymore.
"I tell people, 'Don't use it. It's so dangerous.'"
One woman Mota treated six or seven years ago had swallowed mercury at the instruction of a santero, a Santeria priest, before she came to the United States.
Mota says he was recently offered a 10-pound jar of mercury, but he didn't want to repackage it himself. As a practicing voodoo priest and initiated santero, he's too busy with private consultations and
tarot readings for his patients. Besides, "Where would I do it? Here? At home where my kids are?"
In a 1996 survey by Montefiore Medical Center of 38 botanicas i
n the Bronx, researchers found that the stores sold a minim
um of 25,000 vials a year, nearly half a ton annually in that borough alone.
Urine testing of children who lived in that area found that five of 100 tested had elevated mercury levels - a percentage similar to the occurrence of lead p
oisoning in the same population. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention is following up this year with a larger study, of 250 children living in northern Manhattan and Brooklyn.
A study of pollution in New York Harbor by the New York Academy of Sciences estimated that mercury from cultural and religious practices totaled about 400 kilograms, or 880 pounds, a year. That equals the amount produced by coal-fired power plants, which rank nationally as the largest unregulated source of mercury pollution.
Sewage coming
from a neighborhood in northeastern Manhattan showed excessive amounts of mercury, according to a new study by the New York City Department of Environmental Protection. Inhaled
mercury is usually excreted through urine and feces.
New J
ersey's study of botanicas and apartment buildings was initiated at the recommendation of Wendroff, who alerted the state Task Force on Mercury in 2001 about the widespread use of mercury among certain ethnic groups. Wendroff, a former junio
r high school science teacher in Brooklyn, remembers the day in 1990 when his interest in the subject began.
"I was teaching a chemistry lesson on mercury, and I asked the kids if they knew what it was used for," he says. "I expected them to say thermometers. One of the kids says, 'My mother uses it in Santeria.'"
The boy explained that she sprinkled it on the floor "to keep away the brujas," or witches. The boy knew the botanica where she bought it, and agreed to bring some t
o school. Two days later, the boy showed up with a capsule.
Wendroff subsequently realized that the boy showed some signs of mercury poisoning.
Occupational e
xposure to mercury - among hatters in 19th century London, for example - c
auses a syndrome called erethism, characterized by anorexia, irritability, short-term memory loss, and dislike of being observed. "This kid had all four of them," Wendroff says. "He would put his head on his desk and invert his loose-leaf notebook over it."
The New Jersey study emp
loyed a Santeria priest from New Mexico to interview practitioners in Hudson County. He reported:
A Colombian santera "lamented the fact that it's now more difficult to sell mercury ... [She] says that mercury made up an important part of her sales in the past. She has sold mercury to other Colombians, Mexicans, Cubans, and North Americans. She keeps it in her house rather than the botanica and prefers to sell larger quantities as opposed to
capsules."
In another shop, owned by a Cuban and Puerto Rican couple, "Mercury capsules are very cheap in this botanica ($1.50). Their logic
is that people won't report them if they get a bargain."
A Dom
inican santera "uses elemental mercury and red, yellow, and blue precipitados [mercury oxides] in secret Santeria rituals." She told the researcher that "elemental mercury could be sprinkled for good luck or could be placed in a water goblet [with water and camphor]."
Those interviewed "were unaware of the hazards of mercury," the report
says.
They knew it was "bad to touch or play with, [but] no one knew about the dangers of mercury vapors or the possible effects of long term exposure. The only 'hazard' they mentioned was the legal trouble they thought you could get into if you were caught with mercury."
The study also found mercury vapor was "significantly elevated" in 17 percent
of the apartment buildings tested, says Alan Stern, a co-author and head of the state Department of Environmental Protection's risk analysis bureau. The study di
dn't identify a cause. It may be due to cultural use or something as simple as breaki
ng a thermometer, he says.
Other studies have suggested that local laws be enacted to require that dwellings be tested for mercury - and buyers or tenants informed of the results - when they are sold, much as some states require radon or lead testing.
Routine testing of children's mercury levels, as they are currently tested for lead, may be a good idea in some locales, researchers say.
"We w
ant to protect people's health, and that's the bottom line," Stern says. The goal "is to convince people that this is not a smart and healthy thing to do. If we do this in a clumsy way and drive this underground, then we're not going to be helping anybody."
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lZUVFeXky
