Our very own Metals Chemist, Abby Rudd, co-authored an article recently-published in the journal Science of the Total Environment entitled Total- and Methyl-mercury Concentrations and Methylation Rates across the Freshwater to Hypersaline Continuum of the Great Salt...
Evaluating hair samples for methylmercury (MeHg) concentrations can be particularly useful when performing human health studies, especially when trying to determine sources and timing of mercury exposure. Typical digestion procedures for MeHg determination in...
It is commonly believed that dietary ingestion of one of the most toxic forms of mercury, methylmercury, is primarily due to eating fish. This is not necessarily the case in many areas of the world where rice is a staple food and the levels of methylmercury in rice...
Here at Brooks Rand Labs, we have noticed many of our Canadian clients are working under new discharge permits with lower method detection limit (MDL) requirements for total mercury (Hg). Some water quality guidelines are even demanding site-specific detection limits...
Between recreation and brine shrimp commerce, Utah's Great Salt Lake (GSL) contributes a significant amount of money to Utah's economy. Therefore, it made big news roughly a decade ago when methylmercury results from the lake were found to be the highest ever seen in...
The daunting question of how to manage land and wildlife with respects to impacts made by mercury cycling and bioaccumulation are difficult to address on a local, regional, national, and international level. In a collaborative effort lead by the Biodiversity Research...
Mercury is a dangerous neurological toxin and too much exposure has been responsible for several poisoning outbreaks around the world. Routes of exposure and metabolism have been well documented for elemental mercury, organic mercury, and inorganic mercury. In...
Ethylmercury is a major component of thimerosal, a vaccine preservative, and it has neurotoxic effects that are similar to those of methylmercury, but its tissue deposition and clearance rates in organisms are not well-understood. In order to better understand the...
When mercury is released into the environment it can be transformed from inorganic mercury into the far more toxic form of methylmercury. Scientists have known for decades that bacteria are largely responsible for the methylation of mercury, but the precise mechanism...