Effect Of Mercury Exposure On Nutritional And Health Status, Physical Growth, Motor And Mental Development Of Preschool Children

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Home Economics - Faculty of Agriculture - University of Alexandria

2 Department of Animal Production - Faculty of Agriculture - University of Alexandria

3 Department of Nutrition and Special Food - Food Technology Research Institute, Agricultural Research Center

Abstract

 The present study aimed to investigate the Effect of exposure to mercury on nutritional and health status, physical and motor growth, and mental development of preschool children .The sample included 200 children (100 from contaminated area, and 100 from Non-contaminated area). Also subsample have been chosen (10 from each area) to estimate the concentration of mercury in Urine.
The results revealed that the estimation of daily nutritentsintake of the children, was better in non-contaminated area than contaminated area,especially for energy, protein, vitamins C,A, iron, and Zinc.
Results of the appearance of unhealthy symptoms revealed that children who live in contaminated area had a poor health status than those living in non-contaminated area..
The results revealed, also, that13% of the children in contaminated area, had especially weights 75th percentile and more, compared with 69% only in non-contaminated area. Also, the percentage of children who had heights 75th percentile and more reached 20%, 72% in contaminated area and non-contaminated area, respectively. Also, 47% of the children in contaminated area, had head circumference below 5th percentile, compared to 1% only in non-contaminated area.
For the Intelligence Quotient (IQ) the results revealed that 43% of the children in contaminated area and 1% only in non-contaminated area had I.Q, less than the average.
The mean of urine mercury concentration was 3.64± 0.558 μg/l in contaminated area, compared to 1.94 ± 0.433 μg/l in non-contaminated area.
.The results of the correlation coefficients among some variables indicated that there was a negative highly significant correlation (P ≤ 0.01) between educational status of the parents, income per capita, gestational age of the child, weights percentile, heights percentile, head percentile,IQ, the development of large and small muscle and motor development in general, and urine mercury concentration.

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