Chronic Effects of Mercury on Organisms:

Modeling mercurialism and its manifestations under the effect of various concentrations of mercury


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MODELING MERCURIALISM AND ITS MANIFESTATIONS UNDER THE EFFECT OF VARIOUS CONCENTRATIONS OF MERCURY Summary only During an experiment in separate groups of animals we conducted mercury determinations of the blood, urine and feces. The results of some of these determinations have already been covered by us in a series of published works (1951, 1962, 1963). These studies showed that mercury is excreted from the body irregularly. Between the degree of excretion of mercury from the body and the evidence of a mercury effect there is no definitive relationship. As a rule, elimination of mercury from animals subjected to the action of low mercury concentrations, begins quickly (within one to two weeks) from the beginning of the experiment and continued for some time (two to four months and longer) after cessation of mercury contact. This elimination o a background of the chronic effect of mercury and its compounds in concentrations on the order of hundredths of a mg/m3 is characterized by rising and falling periods, in the dynamics of which regularity could not be observed. The absence of a correlation between the urinary mercury content and evidence of mercury damage was also noted in tests at higher mercury concentrations. Experimental observations on the dynamics of mercury elimination from the body of animals confirms conclusions on the irregular excretion of mercury with the urine and of the absence of a definite relationship between the degree of elimination and evidence of a toxic effect observed by us in our studies of mercury workers. Analogous conclusions come from results of determining mercury in feces of experimental animals: its content for the duration of the experiment increased sharply and then fell markedly. In this, as in preceding observations, on the dynamics of urinary mercury excretion, much dependence between these fluctuations in the course of intoxication could not be proved. Even in the first days of the mercury effect, as a rule, mercury is observed in higher concentrations, than at the end of exposure. We couldn't show a relationship between the course of intoxication and the blood mercury content. Indeed, there is a tendency towards an inverse relationship, in which in the first days of exposure, when clinical intoxication was not evident, the mercury content in the blood was significantly higher than in the later period when signs of poisoning were evident. It is possible that upon the entry of mercury into the body, it is adsorbed to a great degree by the organs and forms depots in them.