Delayed toxicity of organic mercury
- Subject: Delayed toxicity of organic mercury
- Date: Thu, 3 Aug 2000 12:32:28 EDT
- Yahoo! Message Number: 5501
- Onibasu Link: http://onibasu.com/archives/am/5501.html
<< Three months delay for a mercury toxicity event is definitely possible. I
don't have the article in front of me but a farm family in New Mexico ate a
pig that was toxic due to eating grain poisoned with mercury, and no
symptoms showed up for three months. >>
There was the lady professor at Dartmouth who dripped some methlymercury on
herself and was fine for about a month before things started to happen.
There was a similar polish article (where they were later treated with lipoic
acid). And the reports from assorted mass poisonings due to grain
preservative all have delays.
When you get organic mercury compounds in you, the organic mercury itself
actually isn't very toxic. What IS toxic is the INORGANIC mercury it
eventually converts into. So you get "poisoned" by organic mercury because
it doesn't come out before it converts to the real poison, not because the
compound as ingested is all that bad. This conversion takes time - the half
life for methylmercury is 44 days.
Remember - fish can be so full of methylmercury that if we eat them we get
poisoned, but the fish itself is just fine. The fish keeps the mercury
methlyated in which form it is safe. Us mammals demethlyate it and get
ourselves in trouble. But until our metabolism gets the demethylation done -
as in right after the pediatrician shot tons of ethylmercury into your cute
little baby - you are fine.
Andy Cutler
Onibasu Link: http://onibasu.com/archives/am/5501.html