What is Mercury?

How Toxic is Mercury?

How Are People Exposed to Mercury?

How to Protect Yourself From Mercury Exposure

Health Effects

Main Symptoms

What to Do if a Mercury Spill Occurs

Mercury Information Home

How Are People Exposed to Mercury?

Both short and long-term exposure to metallic mercury can cause serious health problems. Human exposure to metallic mercury occurs primarily from breathing contaminated air. Other forms of mercury poisoning include drinking contaminated water or eating contaminated food (mercury contaminated fish). Mercury may enter the body directly through skin contact.

Exposure to mercury can come from the breakage of a thermometer, spillage of elemental mercury used in a high school or college laboratory or the unknowing contamination by youths experimenting or playing with discovered elemental mercury. Young children may be at greater risk for exposure since they often play on the floor or carpeting where metallic mercury has been spilled or tracked. They are particularly vulnerable to damage to their nervous systems. Mercury vapors are readily absorbed into the bloodstream through the lungs, and the human central nervous system, which is still developing during early childhood, may become permanently damaged.

Mercury is also is used in conjunction with some ethnic folk medicine and religious practices. Known as "azogue" in Latino botanicas (stores selling folk medicines and religious items), mercury is used in several Caribbean-based cultural practices: Esperitismo, a spiritual belief system native to Puerto Rico; Santeria, a Cuban-based religion that venerates both African deities and Catholic saints; and voodoo. The use of azogue (mercury) in religious practices is recommended in some Hispanic communities by family members, spiritualists, card readers and santeros. Azogue may be carried in a sealed pouch prepared by a spiritual leader or sprinkled in the home or automobile. Some botanica owners suggest mixing it in bath water or perfume and placing it in devotional candles. Such practices rapidly vaporize the mercury, posing a great health risk, particularly to those practitioners and devotees who frequently indulge in such religious practices.