MANGANISM has been known about since the 19th century, when miners exposed to ores containing manganese, a silvery metal, began to totter, slur their speech and behave like someone inebriated. The poisoning was irreversible, and soon ended in psychosis and death. Nowadays workers are exposed to far lower doses and manganism is rare. But new research suggests it could be some way from being eradicated entirely. The metal’s detrimental effects on human health may be subtle but widespread, contributing to diseases known by other names.For the past ten years Brad Racette, a neurologist at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, has been tracking those effects, paying special attention to welders, since they are exposed to more manganese than most people. Being harder than iron, manganese is often used to strengthen steel and is present in many industrial emissions, including welding fumes.In one study, Dr Racette found that symptoms resembling Parkinson’s disease (PD) were 15% more prevalent in welders than in other kinds of workers. In another, he found that in a small sample of welders who had not yet reported any neurological symptoms, brain scans showed signs of damage to a part of their brains called the striatum that co-ordinates movement and is damaged in PD. In the case of PD, it has been clearly shown that the first symptoms appear only after the striatum has lost...
from The Economist: Science and technology http://ift.tt/1iiB0th
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