Methylmercury

Evaluates the risks to adult and foetal health posed by exposure to compounds of monomethylmercury.

In view of the irreversible neurological damage produced in severe cases of poisoning, the book makes a special effort to clarify the ways in which this metal enters the food chain and to define the levels that constitute a risk to human health.

Close to 400 recent investigations, including numerous clinical studies following outbreaks of poisoning, are critically assessed.

The main part of the book evaluates the large number of experimental, epidemiological and clinical studies relevant to the assessment of health effects in humans.

Chapters devoted to effects in humans draw upon what has been learned from poisoning outbreaks in Minamata, Japan and in Iraq as well as from studies of populations consuming high quantities of fish in Canada and New Zealand.