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High-level exposure to methylmercury is known as Minamata disease. [2] Methylmercury exposure in children may result in acrodynia (pink disease) in which the skin becomes pink and peels. [2] Long-term complications may include kidney problems and decreased intelligence. [2] The effects of long-term low-dose exposure to methylmercury are unclear ...
Methylmercury exposure in adults has also been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease including heart attack. [32] [33] [34] Some evidence also suggests that methylmercury can cause autoimmune effects in sensitive individuals. [35]
Prior to the 1950s, the "scientific community was unaware of the effects of methylmercury on humans". [9] In a 1958 article in The Lancet, two medical doctors reported their findings which confirmed a "link between methylmercury contaminated fish and human neurologic symptoms."
The cell damage is irreversible. The half-life of methylmercury in human tissue is 70 days, which allows it ample time to accumulate to toxic levels. Humans are exposed to methyl mercury from the consumption of aquatic species. As mercury bioaccumulates through the food chain, the amount of methyl mercury increases to these toxic levels. [11 ...
Mercury and methyl mercury are present in only very small concentrations in seawater. However, they are absorbed, usually as methyl mercury, by algae at the start of the food chain. This algae is then eaten by fish and other organisms higher in the food chain. Fish efficiently absorb methyl mercury, but excrete it very slowly. [6]
Produced methylmercury gets accumulated in microbes. Due to the high permeability and absence of degradation for methylmercury in other species that depend on those microbes, this very toxic compound gets biomagnified through marine food chains to the top predators. Many humans consume many types of marine fish that are top predators in the ...
Minamata disease is a disease of the central nervous system, a poisoning caused by long-term consumption, in large amounts, of fish and shellfish from Minamata Bay. The causative agent is methylmercury. Methylmercury produced in the acetaldehyde acetic acid facility of Shin Nihon Chisso's Minamata factory was discharged in factory wastewater...
Health experts suspect that children are more susceptible to methylmercury than adults, because they eat more food relative to their total body weight causing a higher contamination percentage. [15] It has been concluded that 60,000 children born each year are at risk for neuro-developmental effects, due to in utero exposure to methylmercury. [13]