A concentrated review on the toxicology of inorganic mercury together with an extensive review on the neurotoxicology of methylmercury is presented. The challenges of using inorganic mercury in dental amalgam are reviewed both regarding the occupational exposure and the possible health problems for the dental patients. The two remaining "mysteries" of methylmercury neurotoxicology are also bein...

Using synchrotron x-ray fluorescence mapping, we have examined the uptake and localization of organic mercury in zebrafish larvae. Strikingly, the greatest accumulation of methyl and ethyl mercury compounds was highly localized in the rapidly dividing lens epithelium, with lower levels going to brain, optic nerve, and various other organs. The data suggest that the reported impairment of visual...

Mercury has long been recognised as a neurotoxin element for many decades and with its compounds being extremely toxic, is ranked third in the ‘priority list of hazardous substance’ by the United States comprehensive environmental response, compensation, and liability act. In different samples, mercury can exist as either its inorganic or organic forms and this paper will review the methods for...

The 1990 Clean Air Act Amendment (CAAA) empowered the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) to set emission standards for a number of potentially hazardous air pollutants (HAPS) generated by a variety of specific combustion sources. Eleven elements (or compounds of these elements) present in coal are among the 189 pollutants identified as air toxics by the CAAA legislation. Mercury is incl...

The aquaporin family of channels was defined based on the inhibition of water transport by mercurial compounds. Despite the important role of mercurials, little is known about the structural changes involved upon mercury binding leading to channel inhibition. To elucidate the mechanism we designed a mutant, T183C, of aquaporin Z (AqpZ) patterned after the known mercury-sensitive site of aquapor...

n engl j med 357;13 www.nejm.org september 27, 2007 1278 I 1997, Frank Pallone, a U.S. congressman from New Jersey, attached a simple, 133-word amendment to a Food and Drug Administration (FDA) reauthorization bill. This amendment gave the FDA 2 years to “compile a list of drugs and foods that contain intentionally introduced mercury compounds and [to] provide a quantitative and qualitative ana...

in this investigation, the mercury content of different samples of persian gulf shrimp and fish, caspian sea fish and the samples of fish from bandar pahlavi lagoon, zarjoub river near rasht, zayandehroud river near esfahan, and karadj river near tehran were measured by flameless atomic absorption, cold vapor-technique, using standard addition method. the main purpose of this study was to inves...

Mercury toxicity mediated by different forms of mercury is a major health problem; however, the molecular mechanisms underlying toxicity remain elusive. We analyzed the effects of mercuric chloride (HgCl(2)) and monomethylmercury (MeHg) on the proteins of the mammalian thioredoxin system, thioredoxin reductase (TrxR) and thioredoxin (Trx), and of the glutaredoxin system, glutathione reductase (...