BACKGROUND Pregnant women receive mixed messages about fish consumption in pregnancy because unsaturated fatty acids and protein in fish are thought to be beneficial, but contaminants such as methylmercury may pose a hazard. METHODS In the Pregnancy Outcomes and Community Health (POUCH) study, women were enrolled in the 15th to 27th week of pregnancy from 52 prenatal clinics in five Michigan ...

OBJECTIVE Mercury has been suggested to have negative effects on cardiovascular health. We investigated the effects of high mercury content in hair on the risk of acute coronary events and cardiovascular and all-cause mortality in men from eastern Finland. METHODS AND RESULTS The population-based prospective Kuopio Ischaemic Heart Disease Risk Factor Study (KIHD) cohort of 1871 Finnish men ag...

The hair samples of Ferdinand II of Aragon (1467-1496), King of Naples, whose mummy is preserved in the Basilica of San Domenico Maggiore in Naples, showed a high content of mercury, with a value of 827ppm. Furthermore, examination using a stereomicroscope and a scanning electron microscope (SEM) of head and pubic hairs of Ferdinand II, revealed a lice infestation. The reasons for the massive p...

Artisanal and small-scale gold mining (ASGM) has been an important source of income for communities in the Madre de Dios River Basin in Peru for hundreds of years. However, in recent decades, the scale of ASGM activities in the region has increased dramatically, and exposures to a variety of occupational and environmental hazards related to ASGM, including mercury, are becoming more widespread....

OBJECTIVES Fish consumption has been associated with reduced risk of cardiovascular diseases (CVD), especially sudden cardiac death (SCD). Fish is the major source of long-chain n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) eicosapentaenoic acid and docosahexaenoic acid. It is also a major source of methylmercury, which was associated with increased risk of CVD in this study population. Impact of inte...

Fish and other seafood may contain organic mercury but also beneficial nutrients such as n-3 polyunsaturated fatty acids. We endeavored to study whether maternal fish consumption during pregnancy harms or benefits fetal brain development. We examined associations of maternal fish intake during pregnancy and maternal hair mercury at delivery with infant cognition among 135 mother-infant pairs in...

Seven Japanese female workers exposed to mercury vapour at a concentration of < 0.02 mg Hg/m3 (8 h/day, 44 h/week) were examined for inorganic (I-Hg) and organic (O-Hg) mercury concentrations in urine, blood, and hair after 0, 4, 8, 17, and 23 months of exposure. Both I-Hg and O-Hg concentrations in urine and hair did not increase significantly even after 23 months of exposure. The concentratio...

For the determination of total mercury in hair, an amount (25.0 mg) of hair sample was digested with conc. HNO3 (400 microl) at 90 degrees C for 10 min in a 7-ml teflon microreaction vessel. After digestion, the pH of the acidic hair mixture was adjusted to 5.0-6.0 by NaOH and was then passed through a clean-up Sep-Pak C18 cartridge. To the eluate, 2,3-dimercaptopropane-1-sulfonate (DMPS) and s...

Mercury (Hg) is a naturally occurring element that has metallic, inorganic and organic forms, each with their own implications for human health. Exposure to mercury primarily occurs by inhalation of metallic mercury vapors and by dietary intake of organic mercury. Early health effects are often not well detected. Therefore, determination of the internal dose is a valuable approach in primary pr...

This study analyzes mercury concentration in hair samples obtained from the population living in the Upper Madeira River basin, Rondonia. Out of 311 hair samples analyzed, 51% (n=158) had a mercury concentration of over 10 ppm. The wide variability of mercury concentration is well-illustrated by a family in which there were 5 cases with the highest mercury concentrations (90.6 to 303.1 ppm), wh...