Environmental Mercury Contamination

Abstract

Hartung and Dinman have edited much interesting, useful information on mercury. Natural distribution, industrial uses, environmental dynamics and biological effects are reliably given, but some of the analytical data is unreliable. Many of the human blood and urine mercury levels, presented poker-faced, are virtually worthless. The assumption that 2.5 ppm mercury in fish caused a fish-kill near Caspian, Michigan in August 1970 is at best extremely dubious. Unfortunately, political legerdemain, industrial vested interests and pseudoscientific hocus-pocus are evident to the initiated reader. Nowhere in the book is there mention of the 1971 statement of a Swedish expert committee: In analyses of blood and certain other types of biological materials, we must recognize that individual analytical results may vary greatly from the true levels. ( Reviewer's transl.—Nord Hyg Tidskr [suppl 3] 1971, p 19). Nor is there mention of the well-documented fact that the same human blood samples analyzed for mercury levels