Organic Mercury Poisoning: Causes, Symptoms & Risks

Organic mercury poisoning results from substances that contain a combination of the elements carbon and mercury. This type of poisoning poses a risk for severe symptoms and health complications and is difficult to treat.

Sources

• Sources of organic mercury include the preservative thimerosal, once used to preserve some vaccines; fumes from burning coal; and fish that have consumed methylmercury in polluted waters. A now-banned antiseptic red mercurochrome also contained organic mercury.

Time Frame

• A single exposure to a small amount of organic mercury won't typically cause poisoning. The condition develops from repeated exposure over decades, explains the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Exposure to a large amount of organic mercury at one time can also cause poisoning.

Symptoms

• Symptoms of organic mercury poisoning include numbness or pain in certain parts of your skin, tremors, difficulty walking, blindness, double vision and memory problems.

Treatment

• Patients often never recover and must live forever with the symptoms. Rarely, a process known as chelation, which uses an intravenous medication known as EDTA to remove mercury from the bloodstream, can successfully treat patients.

Considerations

• Doctors advise pregnant women to limit how much seafood they consume, because exposure to organic mercury during fetal development poses a risk for brain damage, explains the U.S. National Library of Medicine.