My grandfather was a gold miner.
"Back in the day" before anyone knew any better, he used quicksilver to
separate the gold out from the quartz.
In his later years, he went crazy. I think it was due to Mercury Poisoning.
I don't even think that they put mercury in thermometers anymore do they?

Kate

"paghat" wrote in message
news | In article ta23d.213689$Fg5.102457@attbi_s53, wrote:
|
| http://www.fda.gov/fdac/reprints/mercury.html
|
| Mercury Is Everywhere
|
|
| Mercury occurs naturally in the environment. According to FDA
toxicologist
| Mike Bolger, Ph.D., approximately 2,700 to 6,000 tons of mercury are
| released annually into the atmosphere naturally by degassing from the
| Earth's crust and oceans. Another 2,000 to 3,000 tons are released
annually
| into the atmosphere by human activities, primarily from burning
household
| and industrial wastes, and especially from fossil fuels such as coal.
|
| The Hawke
|
| The website you point to asks if mercury in fish is cause for concern. The
| answer is a resounding yes.
|
| Besides the warnings on the page you cite, against eating more than 12
| ounces of fish per week, here's another FDA-generated warning:
| http://vm.cfsan.fda.gov/~dms/admehg.html
| Title: "An important message for pregnant women and women of childbearing
| age who may become pregant, about the risks of mercury in fish."
| Recommendation: "long-lived, larger fish that feed on other fish
| accumulate the highest levels of methylmercury and pose the greatest risk
| to people who eat them regularly. You can protect your unborn child by
| not eating these large fish...Shark, Swordfish, King macerel, Tilefish."
| The article notes also that FRESHwater fish are more dangerously
| contaminated.
|
| Yet another joint FDA & EPA warning is a little more strident:
| http://www.epa.gov/waterscience/fishadvice/advice.html
| It says plainly not to eat more than 12 ounces of fish a week if you want
| to remain in the safe zone.
|
| The greatest dangers to exposures to the least amounts of mercury are
| prenatal. At present typical mercury levels are not thought to be a
| significant health hazard to adults. But the really dangerous levels of
| both mercery & dioxin are in farm-raised fish rather than wild-caught,
| though dioxin is a growing problem with wild-caught as well, from
| pesticides that wash into bodies of water, & from waste management
| programs that generate dioxins as a byproduct pumped directly in the
| oceans.
|
| Commercial fishing enterprises and especially fish farming umbrella
| organizations are busily generating "mercury is safe" literature & "FDA
| uses junk science" disinformation in order to drum up public support to
| reverse FDA and EPA protections against mercury poisoning. Dickhead Cheney
| would like nothing better than reverse all consumer protection
| legislations of any kind but most especially those like the Mercury act
| promoted primarily by Cheney's archenemy Patrick Leahy. Republicans are
| even now attempting to reverse Senator Leahy's mercury contamination bill,
| & have already pressured EPA into maintaining a level of acceptable
| exposure about one-fifth that of the FDA recommendations.
|
| -paghat the ratgirl
|
| --
| "Of what are you afraid, my child?" inquired the kindly teacher.
| "Oh, sir! The flowers, they are wild," replied the timid creature.
| -from Peter Newell's "Wild Flowers"
| Visit the Garden of Paghat the Ratgirl: http://www.paghat.com