Contrasting mercury contamination scenarios and site susceptibilities confound fish mercury burdens in Suriname, South America.

Autor: Vreedzaam A; Amazon Sustainable Landscapes Program, United Nations Development Programme Suriname, Paramaribo, Suriname., Ouboter P; Institute of Neotropical Wildlife and Environmental Studies, Paramaribo, Suriname., Hindori-Mohangoo AD; Foundation for Perinatal Interventions and Research (Perisur), Paramaribo Suriname, Suriname., Lepak R; US Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development, Duluth, MN USA., Rumschlag S; US Environmental Protection Agency Office of Research and Development, Duluth, MN USA., Janssen S; U.S. Geological Survey, Upper Midwest Water Science Center, USGS Mercury Research Laboratory, Madison, WI 53726, USA., Landburg G; Environmental Laboratory, Anton de Kom University of Suriname, Paramaribo, Suriname., Shankar A; School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA., Zijlmans W; Faculty of Medical Sciences, Anton de Kom University of Suriname, Paramaribo, Suriname., Lichtveld MY; School of Public Health, University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, PA, USA., Wickliffe JK; School of Public Health, University of Alabama at Birmingham, Birmingham, AL, USA. Electronic address: jwickliffe@uab.edu.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: Environmental pollution (Barking, Essex : 1987) [Environ Pollut] 2023 Nov 01; Vol. 336, pp. 122447. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Aug 28.
DOI: 10.1016/j.envpol.2023.122447
Abstrakt: In Suriname, mercury (Hg) use has recently increased because of gold mining, which has put fish-reliant communities (e.g., Indigenous and Tribal) at risk of enhanced Hg exposure through the riverine fish these communities consume. To quantify how the magnitude of these risks change according to location and time, we measured total mercury (HgT) in fish at sites downstream and upstream of an artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) operation in 2004-2005 and in 2017-2018. We tested whether fish HgT burdens over dynamic ranges were increased. Surprisingly, our findings did not support broadly increased fish Hg burden over time or that proximity to ASGM was diagnostic to fish HgT-burden. Subsequently, we elected to test the HgT stable isotope ratios on a set of freshly collected 2020 fish to determine whether differences in Hg source and delivery pathways might cofound results. We found that remote unmined sites were more susceptible to gaseous elemental Hg deposition pathways, leading to enhanced risk of contamination, whereas ASGM proximate sites were not. These results highlight that elemental mercury releases from ASGM practices may have significant impact on fish-reliant communities that are far removed from ASGM point source contamination.
Competing Interests: Declaration of competing interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
(Copyright © 2023 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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