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 in Europe ex