Today, mercury is known as an environmental scourge, but for centuries it was considered an effective medicine. Both Andrew Jackson and Abraham Lincoln took it regularly, and explorers Meriwether Lewis and William Clark carefully packed it into their first aid kit prior to leaving on their expedition to explore the Northwest. Mercury was also used as a dental amalgam for filling teeth, and many of today's adults have mercury-based fillings. The news that mercury is damaging to one's health is a relatively recent conclusion.

Mercury is a by-product of coal plants and some types of manufacturing. Once airborne, it settles into lakes and rivers where it accumulates in fish. Most people today showing dangerous levels of mercury have been exposed via fish consumption. Mercury settles into the body by adhering to fat, and because women carry 10 percent more body fat than men they are more prone to mercury poisoning. Children, too, are at great risk because their neurological systems are still developing.

Once in the human body, mercury acts as a neurotoxin, interfering with the brain and the nervous system. In 2005, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimated that one in 15 U.S. women of reproductive age have a blood mercury level above 5.8 micrograms per liter of blood--a level that could cause birth defects in a developing fetus. A California physician performed her own study and found that the mercury in her female patients' blood was actually 10 times higher than the CDC's average reading; in children the level was sometimes 40 percent higher. . .

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