SPECIAL REPORT:
The Cauldrons of Sta. Lourdes
Mercury in the Present and in the Future Garbage
of Puerto Princesa
By Dr. Jose Antonio Socrates
Part 1 of 3
The mercury in the rocks and soil of Sta. Lourdes
is inorganic. That’s mercury without the elements
carbon and hydrogen, the building blocks of life,
attached to them. In the state they are presently
in; they harm no one. The solid inorganic mercury
in Sta. Lourdes is safe. The mercury in the water,
however, is organic mercury. It is “methyl
mercury.” Methyl is an atom of Carbon bonded
to four Hydrogen atoms. An atom of Mercury takes
the place of one of the Hydrogen atoms in methyl
mercury. Inorganic mercury is organified to methyl
mercury. In this form mercury is absorbed by the
body when ingested and then it stays there –
our normal mechanisms for excreting wastes and toxins
do not work for it. Methyl mercury is poison. Dimethyl
mercury which has two methyl groups attached to
a mercury is even more poisonous.
One of the many poisonous effects of mercury is
an insidious but significant lowering of the resistance
of victims to infection and infestation. This effect
is for life, unless the victim is medically detoxified.
Mercury in the human body is not excreted naturally.
Thus, a community constantly exposed to methyl mercury
in their diet or drink will have higher incidences
of, for example, tuberculosis and malaria than others.
These diseases may also be more severe in mercury
poisoned than in normal people. If the cases are
treated individually, doctors may not even suspect
the poisoning, as they will understandably treat
only the disease.
Last March 2000, the US Geological Survey sent two
of their mercury experts to the Philippines to join
three medical researchers, one of them a Filipina
doctor of our Department of Health, in a study of
malaria in the Sta. Lourdes community in relation
to the mercury in their environment. Several related
or similar studies have already been done on Puerto
Princesa’s mercury problem but the US Geological
Survey Report is the first to declare methyl mercury
in the waters of Sta. Lourdes – and in unacceptably
high concentrations. This is alarming and must be
taken very seriously. One of the previous reports
was by a British Geological Survey study undertaken
through our DENR. It warned about organification
of the mercury by micro-organisms in the soil of
the Sitio Honda Bay “hot rocks jetty”
but reported that the mercury of the hot rocks are
stable. That was anyway to be expected but the study
was done before the city started dumping garbage
in the PQMI mine site in Sta. Lourdes.
Inorganic mercury in the rocks is rather stable
and do not just change to organic mercury. First
the rocks have to crumble and be broken into little
pieces, finally becoming soil. Not rock but soil
is the principal source of mercury for organification.
Even in ordinary soil the inorganic mercury is still
stable. The ingredients necessary to cook up the
inorganic mercury into organic mercury are: 1.)
acid, 2.) microorganisms, principally bacteria,
and 3.) the relative absence of oxygen. Needless
to say, heat is needed for cooking, heat and time.
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