![]() ![]() In the kidneys it can get filtered and excreted in the urine or stored. Once in the blood stream mercury readily travels to the kidneys or the brain. The other fate for the mercury-glutatione complex is the blood stream. It can get incorporated in bile and excreted back into the intestines where it can be either reabsorbed or excreted in your feces. When you ingest mercury (via your daily can of tuna) it gets readily absorbed by the small intestine and shipped to the liver where it forms a complex with glutathione.įrom there the mercury has two fates - bile or blood. Once in the body mercury has a half-life of ~3 days in the blood stream and a 90 day half life in other tissues (e.g. The only functions that mercury has are adverse negatively affecting the brain and kidneys. But unlike zinc and iron, lead and mercury have no useful function in the human body. Mercury, like zinc, iron, and Lead, is a heavy metal. Heavy Metalīefore we dive into the mercury/tuna debate, a little background on mercury is necessary. ![]() Other than the occasional can when I'm in a pinch I hadn't eaten tuna in about 3 years. ![]() I had no way of proving them wrong and if they were right the thoughts of mercury poisoning were not very pleasant. Mercury poisoning could lead to brain damage! What did they know they thought the USDA Food Pyramid was the way to good health! But then I got scared. They printed off charts and diagrams saying how I should only eat 1-2 cans of tuna per week. I would regularly eat 3 cans a day but then some of my fellow researchers started giving me a hard time saying that I was poisoning myself because tuna was loaded with mercury. With a long shelf life and at $0.50 a can for chunk lite tuna how could I go wrong? I use to keep my lab desk drawers stock full of chunk light tuna (who needs file folders?-I needed protein). ![]()
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