Mercury Toxicity: Ecological Features of Organic Phase of Mercury in Biota- Part I

Abstract

Mercury is extensively used in industry with top usage in electrolytic chlorine. As a result of this elemental consumption in industry, different forms of inorganic and organic mercury get into the environment in great piles every day and many of these mercurial derivatives are converted to methylmercury by microorganisms. The study is assigned to inspect the ecological features of organic mercury species in biological and marine environments. In addition, the paper takes into account the uptake and the distribution of mercury in fish to investigate the conversion and mobilization of mercury from sediment deposits into the general environment. It has been confirmed that the biological half-life of methylmercury in human is about 70 days. In methodology, molecular identification of mercury has been defined. Monomethyl mercury in sediments was analyzed by gas chromatography (GC) hyphenated with electron capture detector (ECD) and the confirmation was measured by mass spectroscopy (MS). The conversion of mercury element to its organic species has been illustrated. In soil, it was found that lower pH favors monomethyl mercury and the higher pH, dimethylmercury formation, respectively. Dimethylmercury is the biological poisoning product and methylmercury is an artifact of isolation procedure. In next paper, we will turn to study the epidemiological features of organic phase of mercury and investigate in deep the distribution, metabolism, and toxicity of mercury and methylmercury in some essential raw food materials, domestic animal feedstock, and some other biological specimens using basically simple analytical methods of chromatography as paper (PC) and thin layer (TLC).