Relación entre la contaminación con mercurio y el funcionamiento intelectual y afectivo en un grupo de niños de Humacao, Puerto Rico

The following study aims to investigate the relationship between mercury contamination and the intellectual and affective functioning of a group of children from Humacao, an eastern town in Puerto Rico.Eleven public school children, 7 to 15 years old, constituited the experimental group. All of them had lived in Ciudad Cristia, a residential area evacuated be cause of mercury contamination (mercury level above 2.8 mg/ml.).Eleven other public school children within the same age range were chosen as a control group. these lived in Naguabo, also an eastrn town with similar characteristics to the group of Humacao.Both groups were tested with the Wechsler Children´s Intelling Scale (WISC), the Bender Gestalt Test, and the Draw a Person Test for the assessment of intellectual functions. The emotional affective functions were tested through the Kovac´s Depression Inventory for Children (1985).In order to investigate possible differences, r tests were performed.Pearson r correlations were also calculated to explore the relationship between levels of mercury and intelllectual and affective functioning. These analysis revealed a decreasing tendency in intellectual abilities of the experimental group when compared with the control group when compared with the control group. Statistically significant differences were obtained for the total IQ as well as for the Block Designs sub-scale. The IQ derived from the Bender-Gestalt tests also revealed significant differences. No differences were detected between the two groups on the depression variable. The implications of the findings of this study are discussed.