If you are not already familiar with mercury toxicity please review this past article on the toxic effects of mercury.

Please don't misunderstand me with respect to my position on mercury amalgam fillings. I don't believe they should be put in, and I strongly advise patients to remove them. However, I only recommend having them removed by an experienced biological dentist, otherwise you risk having more mercury damage deposited in your brain when the fillings are drilled out.

However, while most of my patients are familiar with the danger of mercury fillings, nearly all are completely oblivious to the dangers that fish pose. This is a very real danger, and even the FDA is coming on line with the EPA and trumpeting the warning.

I have done hair analysis in my office for a number of years. Many experts consider hair analysis to be a questionable diagnostic technique; I presented my views on hair analysis in a letter that was published in JAMA three years ago.

However, most agree that hair analysis is an accurate screen for heavy metal exposure. It is clear from the many hundreds of tests I have done that there is a strong link between the consumption of fish and the elevation of mercury in the hair.

The more fish consumed, the higher the levels of mercury in the hair. It can be predicted with a high degree of accuracy just how much fish a person is eating by looking at the hair mercury level. Fortunately, after a person stops eating fish the levels drop consistently over time.

This important study, which was published in JAMA, caused me to carefully review the mercury issue in light of my experience with hair analysis.

I have known for some time that there are different types of mercury. Briefly they break down to three forms:

• Elemental
• Inorganic
• Organic (primarily methylmercury)

Elemental and inorganic mercury exposure can come from your fillings, burning of coal and medical wastes, and environmental and occupational exposures. While these forms of mercury are toxic, they pale in comparison to the toxicity of methylmercury.

Methylmercury is formed through microbial action from inorganic mercury that has deposited in the oceans and lakes and bioaccumulates through the food chain in ever-increasing concentrations through the large predatory fish. There is a nice graphic on the mercury toxicity page that illustrates this concept.

Typically, the larger the fish, the larger the levels of mercury. That is why tuna is so high in mercury and why whale meat was documented as one of the highest concentrations of mercury, where a single mouthful would be poisonous.

It is a sad tragedy that we have contaminated the water with mercury. Most people don't recognize that over half the electricity in the United States is generated by burning coal. Coal is contaminated with mercury, and when it is burned it eventually finds its way back to lakes and oceans and is converted to the highly toxic methylmercury that harms your central nervous system and that of any fetus whose mother was unwise enough to consume it.

The relatively small amounts in the ocean would be a non-issue if it weren't accumulated so effectively in sea life. But this bioaccumulation in fish can increase the concentration many millions of times more than is present in the water.

This is the main reason why diet, not your silver (mercury) amalgam fillings, is the primary source of mercury to people. Part of the reason why this is so is that when you eat fish you absorb over 95 percent of the merthylmercury that is present in the fish.

This is such a significant problem that even the conservative EPA believes at least 8 percent of pregnant women have enough mercury exposure to cause toxic side effects to their children--that is one in 12 women.

It is also the reason why you will need to seriously rethink your position on eating fish. This is particularly tragic because fish is nutritionally one of the best foods for you and nearly ideal for all nutritional types.

Many believe that farm-raised fish will solve the problem, but many recent studies explain why this is not true.

So it is my strong recommendation to avoid fish unless you know they are not contaminated. The following are some of the better choices:

• Summer Flounder
• Wild Pacific Salmon
• Croaker
• Sardines
• Haddock
• Tilapia

It has been my experience that most salmon, especially the Atlantic, is high in mercury. That is why I stopped eating it quite some time ago, and my hair mercury levels are quite low. However, in 2002 we did extensive testing on the fish from a company, VitalChoice, that takes the salmon from the interior of Alaska and were surprised and delighted to find that the mercury levels were virtually unmeasurable.

So, if you enjoy salmon half as much as I do and are concerned about mercury damaging your brain, then please consider the safe Alaskan wild red salmon that I have been able to arrange to distribute through VitalChoice.

If you don't believe me, then do yourself a favor and have the fish you are consuming measured for mercury and confirm this yourself. Alternatively, and less expensively, you could do a hair analysis and indirectly determine just how much mercury you have been exposed to.

Remember though, the hair is a record of the last three months only. So if you have had exposure for only a few weeks or longer than three months ago, the hair will not be able to accurately tell you what your mercury exposure to the fish was. It is only an average over the last three months.

If you are concerned about potential mercury toxicity, numerous research projects in the United States and Europe indicate that chlorella, a type of green algae, can aid the body in the breakdown of metallic toxins such as mercury. This detoxification of heavy metals and other chemical toxins in the blood will take three to six months to build up enough to begin this process.

Related Articles:

Toxicology: How Mercury Harms Humans

Accuracyof Hair Mineral Analysis

Mercury In Your Fish