Health effects of Mercury include mainly:
- Disruption of the nervous system
- Damage to brain functions
- DNA damage and chromosomal damage
- Allergic reactions, resulting in skin rashes, tiredness and headaches
- Negative reproductive effects, such as sperm damage, birth defects and miscarriages
- Damaged brain functions can cause degradation of learning abilities, personality changes, tremors, vision changes, deafness, muscle in coordination and memory loss. Chromosomal damage is known to cause mongolism.
Environmental effects of mercury:
- Mercury from soils can accumulate in mushrooms.
- Acidic surface waters can contain significant amounts of mercury. When the pH values are between five and seven, the mercury concentrations in the water will increase due to mobilization of mercury in the ground.
- Once mercury has reached surface waters or soils microorganisms can convert it to methyl mercury, a substance that can be absorbed quickly by most organisms and is known to cause nerve damage.
- Fish are organisms that absorb great amounts of methyl mercury from surface waters every day. As a consequence, methyl mercury can accumulate in fish and in the food chains that they are part of.
- The effects that mercury has on animals are kidneys damage, stomach disruption, damage to intestines, reproductive failure and DNA alteration.
For more information refer to link below.
