Mercury Toxicity: Soil, Air, Water
How it Affects your Nerves, Kidneys and Heart
Nausea, loss of balance, slurred speech, vision and hearing loss, inflammation, enzyme disruption are attributable to mercury exposure.
So much has been written about mercury, an article search on medline yields over 10,000 articles with "Mercury" in the title, 108 of them in the first two months of 2007.
Vermillion Toxicity
One drop of mercury on a person’s skin can be fatal. A drop in a lake can make the fish poisonous to the birds, animals, and people that eat them.
Hydrargyrum, Latin for "silvery water", is the name from which comes Hg, the symbol for mercury. Its high surface tension made it fun to play with before we knew how toxic it was when absorbed through the skin. A great conductor of electricity, it is used in flourescent bulbs and light switches. Mercury's most common form, Cinnabar ore, has a dark red color. In the powdered form it is used in paints and known as Chinese vermillion.
U.S. The Biggest Producer
The United States is the biggest produce of mercury for industry, followed by Spain, Kyrgyzstan, Algeria, China, and Finland. In the US, mercury is produced as a by product of gold mining in California, Nevada and Utah.
Kinds and Uses of Mercury
Elemental (metallic) mercury, is a shiny, silver, odorless liquid used in thermometers.
Organic mercury (mercury combined with carbon and methyl mercury) can cross the blood brain barrier and placenta easily.
Inorganic mercury is seen in mercury salts, used in medicines and mercuric nitrate which was used by the felt-hat industry. A practice, which lead to the phrase, "Mad as a Hatter" from the personality changes relating to chronic low grade exposure caused.
Various forms of mercury are, or have been, used in: waterproofing paints, medicine, treatment of syphilis, disinfectants, tanning of leather, spray for potato seedlings, insecticides, fungicide, maggot control in agriculture, preservation of wood, embalming fluid, batteries, thermometers, textile printing, and engraving, germicidal soaps, photography, red, yellow and green pigments in paints, perfumes and cosmetics, fireworks, and as a preservative (thimerosal) in contact lense solution and vaccines as well as in dental amalgams.
A 1997 U.S. Environmental Protection Agency report on mercury indicates that mercury emissions from human activities (coal burning, municipal and medical waste) comprise 50 to 75 percent of all mercury released into the atmosphere in the United States. Mercury is also released into the air during volcanic activity, weathering of rocks, and forest fires.
Symptoms of Mercury Poisoning
Some of the symptoms of mercury toxicity include:
- Digestive Problems: nausea and diarrhea,
- Nervous System Disfunction: loss of balance, shaking of the arms and legs, slurred speech, vision and hearing loss
- Mouth Infections: inflammation of the mouth and gums, loosening of the teeth
- Organ Damage: especially to the kidneys
- Musculoskeletal problems
- Personality Changes: depression, nervousness
Methyl mercury targets and kills neurons in specific areas of the nervous system including the: visual cortex (eyes, blurred vision, headaches), cerebellum (balance issues), and dorsal root ganglia (chronic pain, nerve root pain, spinal dysfunction) (Eric H. Chudler, Ph.D. University of Washington Engineered Biomaterials, 2007).
Several mechanisms have been proposed to explain how mercury kills neurons including:
- protein inhibition (gluten and casein are the proteins in wheat / grains and dairy).
- disruption of mitochondria function (the energy production of the system)
- direct affect on ion exchange in a neuron (heart arrhythmias)
- disruption of neurotransmitters (how brain cells communicate)
- destruction of the structural framework of neurons (leading to chronic pain)
Mercury and Enzymes
Perhaps it is a case of ‘what doesn't kill you makes you strong’ but a little mercury can induce a protective response, Wolf notes "while high concentrations of heavy metals are cytotoxic" or toxic to the cells in our bodies. The protective response stimulated by a small amount of heavy metal exposure includes "increased synthesis of glutathione, which presumably preserved the activity of key thiol enzymes" (Wolf, 2007 in Cadmium and Mercury Cause an Oxidative Stress-induced Endothelial Dysfunction). Biometals).Thiol enzymes are important in cardiovascular health, membrane integrity of the blood vessel wall and responsiveness of the blood vessel walls to the nervous system.
