Inégalités de contamination par le mercure le long du rio Béni (Bolivie) : un marqueur de l’inégale gestion et pratique des espaces par les communautés

Health geography in France has for nearly a century now been contributing to the understanding of health inequalities in countries in the northern and in the southern hemispheres. Even though its conceptual structure and methodology were for the most part initially developed through the study of vector-borne diseases, health geography has subsequently extended its scope through focussing on emerging health issues. This presentation will demonstrate how a highly fruitful method, widely applied to the understanding of health inequalities of communicable diseases, has allowed us to engage in a novel health issue, barely explored by geographers so far : the study of the exposure in the long term to low level contamination by pollutants. With the example of mercury contamination disparities in the Bolivian Amazon region, this presentation confirms the efficiency of this method, which constitutes a starting point for the development of future research on the subject of environmental pollution.