Just a Nasty Little Update on Mercury

Karen Wetterhahn (1949-1997) was a well-known professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College specializing in toxic metal exposure. On August 14, 1996 while working with an organic mercury compound called dimethylmercury, she spilled a drop or two on her latex glove. Several months later, she noticed some neurologic symptoms such as loss of balance and slurred speech. She was admitted to the hospital, where it was discovered that the single exposure to dimethylmercury had raised her blood mercury level to 80 times the lethal dose. Despite aggressive chelation therapy, she fell into a coma and died a few months later, less than a year after her initial exposure. Her death, despite use of gloves, a fume hood, and standard safety procedures, shocked her chemistry department. They tested various safety gloves against dimethylmercury, apparently for the first time ever, and found that most of them were penetrated in seconds. Dimethylmercury was in fairly wide use as a standard for calibrating diagnostic instruments. The discovery of its extreme toxicity and danger is directly due to Karen Wetterhahn's unfortunate accident. OSHA recommendations and MSDSes were changed in consequence and use of dimethylmercury has been highly discouraged. The irony of her death, from the very agents that she specialized in, makes her death particularly poignant. Culled from: wikipediahttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn

NOW: Go get your kids (and yourself!) tested, will you please????