[Reliability of a questionnaire about knowledge concerning exposure to mercury in the production of gold].

The primary economic activity of the municipality of Poconé, Central-West Brazil, is the production of gold. In an attempt to reduce exposure to metallic mercury, schools in that location conduct educative programs directed towards their students. A questionnaire used to evaluate the efficacy of these programs with respect to adolescents' comprehension concerning exposure to mercury was developed in 2007.

[Garbage, work, and health: a case study of garbage pickers at the metropolitan landfill in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil].

This article presents the results of a study on the lives, work, and health conditions of garbage pickers in the largest metropolitan landfill in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Using a semi-structured questionnaire with open-ended and closed questions, the study interviewed these individuals and developed a discussion of their daily lives, work, and health conditions. According to a quantitative-qualitative analysis, the garbage pickers identified garbage as a source of survival and defined health simply as the ability to work.

A program for the control of indoor pollution by metallic mercury.

The objective of this study was to develop an educational program for preventing metallic mercury emissions due to the burning of mercury-gold amalgams inside houses. The main participants were adolescents from a school in the city of Poconé, State of Mato Grosso. The program was developed in five stages, including discussions of the methods and exhibition of slides showing people working in activities including the garimpos, planning activities as dramatizations, making posters and preparing a screenplay for the production of a video, discussing how to prevent indoor burning of gold-mercury amalgams, and a final evaluation of the adolescents about what they had learned during the program.

[Methodology to prevent mercury exposure among adolescents from goldmine areas in Mariana, state of Minas Gerais, Brazil].

The main objective of this study was to promote the evaluation of an educational method to identify health risks among adolescents exposed to mercury by their work in gold mining production.The project was carried out with adolescents from a public school from the District of Monsenhor Horta, Municipality of Mariana, state of Minas Gerais. Statistical evaluation of the results revealed a significant increase in the amount of correct answers between the first and fifth stage concerning the definition of work accidents and its importance in relation to work-related diseases, accidents on route to and from the work place and violence at work site itself.

[Study of exposure to and health effects of atmospheric metallic mercury pollution in an urban population of Poconé, Mato Grosso, Brazil].

This paper evaluates the levels of exposure to and health effects of metallic mercury emissions into the atmosphere by gold dealers in the town of Poconé, Mato Grosso State, Brazil. The project was based on the comparison of referred morbidity, clinical examination, and metallic mercury urinary concentrations in three population groups. The first group consisted of downtown residents who were exposed to metallic mercury emissions.