Mercury and Nervous System Poisoning

Very quickly after entering the body or shifting compartments in the body, mercury becomes tightly bound in the nervous system. Mercury can be found in the brain, spinal cord, ganglia, autonomic ganglia, and peripheral motor neurons (running to muscles). Because it is so quickly absorbed by the nervous system very little is left to be absorbed by other tissues including the connective tissues.

Thus, mercury appears to have a high affinity for nervous tissue and as a result it usually does not appear in the blood, hair, urine, feces or waste waters (e.g. sweat). For this reason trace mineral analysis of hair or blood may not show any mercury levels and an erroneous conclusion that "the patient does not appear to have mercury toxicity" results.

Simply stated: Mercury does not appear to enter certain "compartments" and hair is certainly one of them. Therefore hair analyses for mercury are notoriously inaccurate and totally misleading.

Mercury in the nervous system results in diverse physiological and neurological problems. All of these symptoms are discussed in a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services publication entitled: The Toxicological Profile of Mercury.