VIDEO

Autism Causes: Mercury Poisoning from Vaccines & Environment

Mercury

Is mercury exposure dangerous?

Yes, exposure to mercury can be dangerous and does result in neurologic illness. Small amounts of mercury are found in the preservative thimerosal, which is used in accinations.

The presence of mercury in vaccinations has led many concerned parents to make a connection between mercury exposure and the development of autism. It may be helpful, therefore, to discuss mercury and its effects on the nervous system in general terms here. Mercury occurs naturally in three forms. These are elemental, inorganic, and organic. The elemental form of mercury is the type that used to be found in thermometers; it is silvery, shiny, and looks like liquid metal.

The inorganic form comes as mercury bound to another element, such as chlorine or sulfur, in the form of a salt. The last form is organic mercury, such as phenyl-, ethyl-, and methylmercury. Each of these three forms of mercury can cause different levels of illness depending upon the amount of exposure, the route of exposure, and how much is absorbed by the body.

Inorganic mercury enters the body readily, accumulating mostly in the kidney. It enters the central nervoussystem slowly, but it is also slowly eliminated. Organic mercury compounds are more readily adsorbed and can cross into the brain much more readily than inorganic mercury. The data available from small studies with children have suggested that ethylmercury is less toxic than methylmercury and that it is eliminated from the body more rapidly.

The toxic effects of working with mercury have been well known for millennia. Metal workers and smelters were known to suffer neurologic effects of working with mercury. These effects were also found among hat makers in the 19th century. A mercury solution was commonly used during the process of turning fur into felt, causing the hatters to breathe in the fumes of this highly toxic metal, a situation exacerbated by the poor ventilation of most of the workshops.

This led in turn to an accumulation of mercury in the workers’ bodies, resulting in symptoms such as drooling, hair loss, uncontrollable muscle trembling and twitching, loss of coordination, a lurching gait, difficulties in forming words, slurred speech, loosening of teeth, memory loss, depression, irritability, and anxiety. In very severe cases, they experienced hallucinations. This became know as the “mad hatter syndrome” in England during the 18th and 19th century, as was popularized in the Mad Hatter character in Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland.

During the same period in the United States, Danbury, Connecticut, was known as the “Hat City”; many of its citizens were employed in the hat-making industry. Mercury toxicity was so common in that city that physicians in surrounding areas referred to the neurologic symptoms of confusion, lack of coordination, and trembling hands as “The Danbury Shakes.” One of the most infamous examples of acute mercury exposure in recent history occurred during the 1970s in Iraq. Grain treated with an organic mercury fungicide was the source of contaminated bread. Adults experienced visual disturbances with some subsequent blindness.

Prenatal exposures resulted in children with psychomotor retardation manifesting in increased incidence of seizures and delays in learning to walk. During the 1950s in Japan, pregnant women in the Minamata Bay area consumed fish with high levels of methylmercury, resulting in at least 30 cases of infantile cerebral palsy, as well as the deaths of over 100 people.

It should be noted that epidemiologic studies were performed on these populations. Children exposed to high levels of methylmercury while still in their mother’s womb experienced significant neurological deficits as well as more subtle developmental delays; however, autism was not observed any more frequently in these populations.

Further, the mercury contained in some vaccines is handled very differently by the body than the methylmercury found in foods such as fish or the mercury from industrial accidents. The ethylmercury in vaccines is eliminated from the body more than two times faster than methylmercury. Therefore, one cannot extrapolate the clinical effects of significant prenatal exposures of methylmercury upon a population of patients with a less intense, postnatal exposure to ethyl-mercury.

Term:

Thimerosal – A compound containing around 50 percent ethylmercury by volume. It is used in vaccines to prevent bacterial and fungal growth.