Mercury Poisoning

Methyl mercury intake through fish and other aquatic foods has a considerable effect on

human health. Some surveys that provide information on the percentage of mercury originating from fish assume that the percentage of methyl mercury ranges from 60 to 90 per cent. This implies that fish and fish products that we eat can be a major source of methyl mercury.

The World Health Organisation (WHO) has estimated the daily intake of each form of mercury on the assumption that 75 per cent of mercury is in elemental form, 5 per cent as

inorganic and 20 per cent as methyl mercury. By assuming a daily ventilation of 20 m3, and the amount absorbed across the pulmonary membranes (80 per cent of elemental mercury, 50 per cent of inorganic mercury, and 80 per cent of methyl mercury), daily intakes were calculated.

Mercury exposure is a common phenomenon in the working environments that use mercury. Occupational exposure may range from the subtlest of health disturbances to serious damages and even death. A number of cases have been reported from chlor-alkali

plants, mercury mines, mercury-based gold extraction, processing and sales, thermometer

factories, dental clinics with poor mercury handling practices and production of mercurybased chemicals.

Many studies and hundreds of thousands of clinical tests by medical labs3 have documented that dental amalgam is the largest source of mercury in most people. Laboratory tests have shown the average person with amalgam gets 10 times as much daily mercury exposure as the average person without.

Elemental and inorganic mercury is also methylated by bacteria, yeasts, etc, in the mouth

and intestines to methyl mercury. This also makes dental amalgam the largest source of

methyl mercury in most people who have amalgams. This is due to continuous vapourisation in the mouth caused by mercury’s high vapour pressure; it is also caused by oral galvanism of mixed metals and the inducement of currents in the metals that are pumped into the body, as confirmed by numerous studies on saliva, oral mucosa and autopsy studies.