Mercury, especially in its organic methylmercury form, is well known to cause severe problems in the brain – famously, Alice in Wonderland’s Mad Hatter is thought to be a victim of mercury poisoning.
Because mercury in the environment – both from natural sources and from pollution – can find its way into the food we eat, particularly fish, there are warnings and regulations around how much fish people should eat. But Graham George, a toxicologist at the University of Saskatchewan, says we don’t actually have a good understanding of the long-term effects of the levels of mercury typically seen in our food. “There is a lot of discussion about how mercury in our diets might affect us, but it is almost all extrapolated from animal studies of acute exposure,” says George. Read more in CIC News.