https://www.safeminds.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/04/Bernard-et-al-2001.pdf

Autism: a novel form of mercury poisoning

A ruling by the European Union heralds the demise of those useful clinical instruments, the mercury thermometer and the mercury sphygmomanometer. The new laws have been passed because of worries about mercury poisoning. Yet you can drink metallic mercury and come to no harm. What does it all mean? There are three forms of mercury from a toxicological point of view: inorganic mercury salts; organic mercury compounds; and metallic mercury. Inorganic mercury salts are water soluble, irritate the gut, and cause severe kidney damage. Organic mercury compounds, which are fat soluble, can cross the blood brain barrier and cause neurological damage. Mercury metal poses two dangers. It can be vaporised: the vapour pressure at room temperature is about 100 times the safe amount, so poisoning can occur if mercury metal is spilled into crevices or cracks in the floorboards. Dentists are occasionally poisoned this way. Mercury easily crosses into the brain, and causes tremor, depression, and behavioural disturbances. A second danger from metallic mercury is that it is biotransformed into organic mercury, by bacteria at the bottom of lakes. This can be passed along the food chain and eventually to man. It was this process that led to the Japanese tragedy at Minimata Bay in the late 1950s when over 800 people were poisoned. It is the need to reduce mercury contamination of the environment which should encourage us to cut the usage of metallic mercury. However, much more metallic mercury is spilled as waste by the chemical industry than is dropped on the floor in the clinic.

Toxicity of mercury.

Drugs in every major pharmacological category can impair both taste and smell function and do so more commonly than presently appreciated. Impairment usually affects sensory function at a molecular level, causing 2 major behavioural changes — loss of acuity (i.e. hypogeusia and hyposmia) and/or distortion of function (i.e. dysgeusia and dysosmia). These changes can impair appetite, food intake, cause significant lifestyle changes and may require discontinuation of drug administration.

Drug-induced taste and smell disorders. Incidence, mechanisms and management related primarily to treatment of sensory receptor dysfunction.

Mercury toxicity in the pregnant woman, fetus, and newborn infant. A review.

Zinc · protoporphyrin is a selective inhibitor of heme oxygenase activity in the neonatal rat

A review of the medical toxicology of cadmium, cobalt, selenium, arsenic, nickel, copper, manganese, tellurium, vanadium, molybdenum, zinc, and tin; emphasis is on industrial sources of in...

The Human Toxicity of Certain Trace Elements

The recent recognition of mercury as a widespread environmental pollutant has presented practitioners with a new problem whose medical aspects they may be ill prepared to evaluate. Extensive background information on human toxicity is available from studies of the effects of occupational exposures. Such exposures have generally been to concentrations considerably greater than those found environmentally and have been mostly to inorganic mercury or compounds that readily decomposed to inorganic mercury. The organic forms of mercury, particularly the monomethyl mercury compounds, are far more toxic and are the type likely to be encountered in community exposures, as, for example, in foodstuffs. Characteristics of mercurialism originating from the absorption of both inorganic and organic mercury compounds are reviewed, and current problems concerning the risks of human exposure at environmental levels are presented. 149 references, 2 figures.

Mercurialism: Environmental and Occupational Aspects

The problem of lead poisoning

Excerpt In the wake of the mercury scares of 1970-1971 that were triggered by the revelation of pervasive contamination of our food supply, particularly tuna fish, an intensive search began for all...

Morris M. Joselow

Papers

The Human Toxicity of Certain Trace Elements

Mercurialism: Environmental and Occupational Aspects

The problem of lead poisoning

Indoor air pollution by mercury.