Mercury is a metal found in the environment from natural and anthropogenic sources. It is highly toxic to ecosystems and living beings. Most human exposures come from ingestion of contaminated seafood, outgassing from dental amalgam or occupational exposure (e.g. gold mining), among other cases. Large populations are exposed to mercury, making it a very important issue
from the public health perspective. Adverse health effects are commonly seen
in the nervous system, but every organ is a potential target, such as the bone
marrow. The main goal of this study was to assess the available evidence on
human exposure to mercury and its hematological effects. A search strategy
was constructed, including key terms (MeSH, text word and equivalents) for
querying 2 repositories of master dissertation and PhD thesis (Fiocruz/ARCA
and University of S?o Paulo) and 4 different electronic databases: BVS/
LILACS, MEDLINE/PubMed, Scopus and TOXLINE/NIH, for articles published from 1950 to February 2018. There was no language restriction and a tool (EPHPP) was used to assess the quality of included studies. According to
pre-established criteria, 80 studies were retrieved, all of them observational
(48 case reports, 24 cross-sectional, 6 case series and 2 cohorts), comprising
9,284 people. Despite the fact that most exposed ones (6,012) had normal blood
cell count and mercury hematological effects did not seem very usual (1,914
cases: 14 severe and 29 deaths), three studies reported association (?) for anemia, lymphopenia, neutrophilia and basophilia. We concluded that the gathered information pointed to mercury hematotoxic effects, some of them may
be serious and even fatal.
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