Mercury in the Illegal Gold Mining Workers

Indonesia has a quite large potential production of gold mining with average production 113.720,4423 kg/year. Gold mining production by mercury could cause health problems, such as mercury poisoning. The purpose of this study was to analyze the risk factor of mercury accumulation in hair samples from illegal gold mining (IGM) workers in Cisarua, Nanggung, Bogor in 2013. This research was a quantitative study by cross sectional approach. The population in this research were all illegal mining workers in Cisarua. The samples were taken using accidental sampling technique with a number of 40 workers and collected by interviews and observation. The measurement of mercury levels in workers hair counted with AAS FIMS by Reverence Recovery Material 100%. The independent variables in this study were age, working period, hours of work and consumption of fish. Meanwhile, the dependent variable was the accumulation of mercury in workers hair samples. The results showed that the average accumulation of mercury in hair samples counted between 2,03 to 9,04 ppm. There are 24 people (60%) suffered mercury poisoning more than 2 ppm. The working period factor (p value = 0.000) correlated with the accumulation of mercury in hair samples of IGM workers. It had a positive correlation with moderate strength (r = 0.552). Multivariate analysis described the model (Accumulation of Mercury = -0.315 + 0.896* working period) with Adjusted R Square 52.6%.