Mechanisms of mercury disposition in the body

Abstract

Today the most widespread human exposures to mercury are to mercury vapor emitted from amalgam tooth fillings, to ethylmercury as a preservative in vaccines, and to methylmercury in edible tissues of fish. This review will focus on the mechanisms of transport of these three species of mercury. All three species are freely moveable throughout the body. Inhaled vapor in view of its physical properties as an uncharged atomic gas is believed to be transported by passive diffusion. Methylmercury and ethylmercury also move freely in the body. Methylmercury, and presumably its closely related chemical cousin ethylmercury, cross cell membranes as complexes with small molecular weight thiol compounds, entering the cell in part as a cysteine complex on the large neutral amino acid carriers and exiting the cell in part as a complex with reduced glutathione on endogenous carriers. The implications of these mechanisms with regard to biological monitoring are discussed.

Phytotoxicity of Mercury in Plants: A Review

“…Among metals, Hg is unique in that it is found in the environment in several physical and chemical forms: for example, elemental Hg (Hg 0 ), inorganic Hg (Hg 2+ ), associated with ions (SHg, ClHg 2 ), mercurous chloride or calomel (Hg 2 Cl 2 ), and organic Hg (e.g., CH 3 -Hg) [8,23,24].…”

Mercury Biodistribution in Rats after Chronic Exposure to Mercury Chloride

“…By supposing that organic mercury is liposoluble and highly diffusible while inorganic mercury has very low liposolubility and ability to enter cell membranes, we could speculate that as the level of exposure increases, so does the deposition of this metal in tissues, which would make it difficult to achieve a proportional increase in blood level as a result of increased exposure. 27 As a result, although blood mercury level is useful for short-term and high-level exposures, the blood mercury should not be an estimative of the body burden in chronic and low-dose of exposures because the blood level may decrease within days of exposure. In other words, blood levels of mercury did not follow a linear relationship in parallel with the exposure, since it would increase the portion that would potentially be deposited in the peripheral tissues.…”

Entropy Generation Analysis at Mixed MHD Convection in a Square Lid-Driven Cavity Filled With Darcy–Brinkman- Forcheheimer Porous Medium

“…Mercuric mercury in the blood stream binds to -SH groups on erythrocytes, glutathione and metallothioneines or is transported suspended in plasma. There are experimental evidences that this compound is accumulated in the brain through its binding to cysteines [27]. Inorganic mercury, that derives from industrial release, is biomethylated to methylmercury (MeHg), primarily by sulfate-reducing bacteria [9,10,28],…”