Jan. 7, 2013 Cleaning up mercury pollution and reducing prenatal
exposure to the neurotoxin methylmercury (MeHg) could save the
European Union €10,000 million per year, finds a new study
published in BioMed Central's open access journal Environmental
Health. New estimates suggest that between 1.5 and 2 million
children in the EU are born each year with MeHg exposures above
the safe limit of 0.58µg/g and 200,000 above the WHO recommended
maximum of 2.5µg/g. While some mercury occurs naturally in the
environment for example from volcanic eruptions or forest fires,
most is generated by burning fossil fuels. Marine and fresh
water species bioconcentrate MeHg; consequently the main source
of exposure for humans is from eating fish. A team of
researchers from across Europe used the DEMOCOPHES study of
exposure to environmental chemicals to assess the impact of MeHg
on humans. Hair samples of child-mother pairs, collected from 17
European countries, demonstrated that, as a lower estimate,
1,866,000 children are born