Mercury poisoning is a type of metal poisoning due to exposure to mercury. Symptoms depend upon the type, dose, method, and duration of exposure. They may include muscle weakness, poor coordination, numbness in the hands and feet, skin rashes, anxiety, memory problems, trouble speaking, trouble hearing, or trouble seeing. High-level exposure to methylmercury is known as Minamata disease. Methylmercury exposure in children may result in acrodynia (pink disease) in which the skin becomes pink and peels. Long-term complications may include kidney problems and decreased intelligence. The effects of long-term low-dose exposure to methylmercury are unclear.Forms of mercury exposure include metal, vapor, salt, and organic compound. Most exposure is from eating fish, amalgam-based dental fillings, or exposure at a workplace. In fish, those higher up in the food chain generally have higher levels of mercury, a process known as biomagnification. Less commonly, poisoning may occur as a method of attempted suicide. Human activities that release mercury into the environment include the burning of coal and mining of gold. Tests of the blood, urine, and hair for mercury are available but do not relate well to the amount in the body.Prevention includes eating a diet low in mercury, removing mercury from medical and other devices, proper disposal of mercury, and not mining further mercury. In those with acute poisoning from inorganic mercury salts, chelation with either dimercaptosuccinic acid (DMSA) or dimercaptopropane sulfonate (DMPS) appears to improve outcomes if given within a few hours of exposure. Chelation for those with long-term exposure is of unclear benefit.
His treatment was to order the lower deck gun ports to be opened, when it was safe to do so; sleeping on the orlop was forbidden; and no men slept in the lower deck if they were at all symptomatic. Windsails were set to channel fresh air into the lower decks day and night. Historically, gold-mercury amalgam was widely used in gilding, applied to the object and then heated to vaporize the mercury and deposit the gold, leading to numerous casualties among the workers. It is estimated that during the construction of Saint Isaacs Cathedral alone, 60 men died from the gilding of the main dome. For years, including the early part of his presidency, Abraham Lincoln took a common medicine of his time called "blue mass", which contained significant amounts of mercury. On September 5, 1920, silent movie actress Olive Thomas ingested mercury capsules dissolved in an alcoholic solution at the Hotel Ritz in Paris. There is still controversy over whether it was suicide, or whether she consumed the external preparation by mistake. Her husband, Jack Pickford (the brother of Mary Pickford), had syphilis, and the mercury was used as a treatment of the venereal disease at the time. She died a few days later at the American Hospital in Neuilly.