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The Consequences of Lethal Exposure to Manganese Ore Dust

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This June 2005 video by Journeyman TV was uploaded to YouTube on 28 Jan 2008 – International steel magnate Samancor is charged with putting profits before workers’ rights. Former employees at their Johannesburg plant are dying from manganese poisoning.

Selected quotes from the video by Susan Tager, a Neurologist:

Any person working with manganese from the time that is mined until it is processed is at risk.

Once the person has inhaled a large amount of it, it gets absorbed into the blood stream and in certain individuals it gets deposited in very specific sites in the brain which then causes neurological problems.

Usually the initial symptoms are non-specific, tiredness muscle pain, joint pain, forgetfulness and depression that is the acute stage following that one can get what we call psychotic features where a person actually develops hallucination delusion and becomes psychotic. Some of the symptoms are like Parkinson diseases where they develop shaking of the hands, difficulty walking, stiffness of the limbs and a reduction in expressions of the face.

The late stage of manganese poisoning is irreversible so if patients are diagnosed in that stage even if they are taken away from the environment where they had been exposed they will not improve. And in fact some may even deteriorate even after they had been exposed.

We don’t know what predisposes any individual to developing the disease. You could take ten individuals all working for many years with very high blood levels and not all of them will go on and develop the disease.

Full transcript here: https://www.journeyman.tv/film_documents/2702/transcript/

Manganese Ore Must Go

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Alan Straton

Chief Cook, Bottle Washer and Broom Mechanic at MyPE
Passionate about Port Elizabeth and definitely NOT packing for Perth. Alan's ethos is epitomised in the words of Nelson Mandela; "I have fought against white domination and I have fought against black domination. I have cherished the idea of a democratic and free society. If need be, it is an ideal for which I am prepared to die." See more articles by Alan.