In Nationwide Alert, Scientists Put a Hex on Mercury as Folk Cure

When Alicia DeLeon wished for better luck at Lotto, she tucked a pot of herbs and liquid mercury under her bed in Chicago.

In New Orleans, Priestess Miriam created a lucky amulet by pouring mercury into a nutmeg kernel and plugging the hole with candle wax. Such charms, the voodoo practitioner said, give people “hope for their tomorrow.”

And until recently, if a client was plagued by evil, Mr. George, a spiritual advisor in New York City, prescribed a cocktail of wine, the ashes of a prayer, and mercury.

“I used to work with mercury, to protect people, and give it to them to drink,” said Mr. George, whose first name is Orlando and first language is Spanish. “Used to. No more. I used to. I used to.

“The spirit let me know to stop.”

Perhaps the spirit heard from the Environmental Protection Agency.

The EPA tops a growing list of agencies perturbed to learn that some Americans believe the toxic metal is their friend. Believers swear by mercury, hewing to religions and customs familiar in Mexico and around the Caribbean. They carry, sprinkle and swallow mercury, trusting it will bring fortune, love and good health.

But how to shake that faith?

In June, a nationwide alert from Washington warned against such cultural uses of mercury. Chicago’s health department has a campaign to tell people the risks. At least three studies will look closely at New Yorkers who use mercury, including exposure levels.

It’s unknown how many people in this country rely on the tin-white metal day to day. It’s also unknown whether such practices do any harm.

In any case, they deserve attention, said Alexis Cain, an environmental scientist at the EPA’s Chicago office. “As of yet, we’re not talking about poisonings,” he said. “So I think everyone should stay calm about it.”

Users buy quicksilver--azogue (ah-SO-gay) in Spanish--from botanicas, folk pharmacies common in Hispanic and Haitian communities.

Such shops cater to the soul as well as the body. Besides herbal nostrums, botanicas sell the trappings of Santeria and voodoo, faiths that blend Christianity and African religions, and of espiritismo, or spiritualism, an older, European version of channeling. Alongside shelves of bottled potions such as “Jinx Remover,” special colored beads and statues of Jesus, patrons may find mercury in gelatin capsules or tiny bottles priced around $2 apiece.

Mercury is not limited to religious worship. By now it’s woven into Caribbean and Latin American cultures, said Clyde Johnson, an environmental scientist at the City University of New York who does research on mercury use.

Devotees strew mercury about their houses and cars. Some burn it in candles. Others add it to mop water and bath water. Mexican-American users in particular favor mercury to relieve empacho, indigestion.

But mercury is poison.

Liquid mercury is the element in its pure state. It’s not as lethal as compounds such as methylmercury, which can accumulate in fish and sicken people, or dimethylmercury, which killed a research chemist this year when a drop seeped through her latex glove.

When swallowed, liquid mercury usually passes safely from the body, but not always. Exposed to air, mercury gives off unseen, odorless--and toxic--vapors. Burning mercury multiplies the peril. So does skin contact.

Mercury poisoning does not show up right away. But over time, regular exposure can lead to tremors. It can rob victims of eyesight and hearing, memory and weight. It may cause peeling palms and feet, and excessive shyness. Other symptoms are joint pain, insomnia, kidney troubles, headaches. Most vulnerable are pregnant women and children.

Mercury is also hard to remove. It can collect and linger in carpets, furniture, walls and floors.

No federal law bars the sale of mercury. But the Federal Hazardous Substances Act requires sellers to attach a warning label. Violators risk fines of $500 to $3,000 per violation.

A visit to any number of botanicas in places like New York and Chicago turns up liquid mercury for sale, without warnings.

At the Botanica Illa Quere in New York’s Spanish Harlem, proprietor Chela Oviedo said recently that she had never heard of the labeling rule. Besides, Oviedo said, “Everybody sells it.”

In response to a reporter’s inquiries, her husband and co-owner, Pablo, said he had planned to stop stocking mercury.

Until recently, the mercury culture of the Oviedos, Mr. George and Priestess Miriam was little known to authorities.

In 1980, the journal Clinical Pediatrics reported two cases of Mexican-American babies sick with gastroenteritis and another mysterious ailment. Hospital X-rays of the little girls, ages 6 months and 15 months, glowed with beads of mercury that eventually landed in their diapers.

The girls recovered. But their stunned doctors concluded the tots’ families dosed them with mercury.

Then, in 1989, Arnold Wendroff was teaching the periodic table to his ninth-grade science class in the New York borough of Brooklyn. At “Hg” he asked them: Did anyone know what this was for?

A boy raised his hand.

He said his mother sprinkled it on the floor to chase evil witches.

“I got alarmed,” Wendroff said, “and very interested.”

A year later, the scientific journal Nature published Wendroff’s findings that mercury was sold in about 100 botanicas in places like San Francisco, Boston, Las Vegas and Tampa, Fla., as well as New York.

Wendroff became a pebble in the government’s shoe, urging action in a torrent of letters sent from City Hall to Congress.

Today Wendroff is retired, but his one-man Mercury Poisoning Project fills four file cabinets.

Because of Wendroff’s efforts, the EPA is spending $20,000 for a study of mercury use in New York. In addition, a pediatrician who teaches at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine plans a study testing hundreds of New York children for mercury exposure.

Public education can work. This year, the Chicago Department of Public Health found 16 botanicas selling mercury and set out to discourage its use. Scared by a Chicago health worker’s words, Alicia DeLeon took the pot of mercury from under her bed and buried it in her yard. “The only person I believe is God,” the retired factory worker said. “I don’t think those things work.”

But three years after California officials tried to warn people away from mercury and its use as a stomachache remedy, they throw up their hands.

“It’s still prevalent in the Hispanic community . . . but basically it’s a very informal kind of a practice,” said Jim Barquist at the California Department of Health Services. “As soon as you start telling people about it, it kind of goes away.”

Immigrants account for much of the mercury use. But then there is Priestess Miriam, the voodoo practitioner in New Orleans. Born in Mississippi, she was reared in the Baptist church and, as an adult, found her spiritual home in voodoo.

She knows mercury is toxic. The priestess, whose legal name is Mary Williams, took college chemistry and worked in operating rooms. “One must know how to use things in potions . . . in a way that won’t be a detriment to the person, or to the society,” she said.

“If there’s a foolish spiritual person telling people to sprinkle it around their home, I wouldn’t even call that person spiritual,” Williams said, her gentle voice ringing with scorn.

“People suffer, not because people work a spell on them, but because they endure the society’s changes.”