JEP mag

Thimerosal: A Safe Preservative
Avariety of studies have been conducted
that looked at the different
effects thimerosal had, or were
thought to have had on the body. A look
at 9 of such studies ranging from early
life exposure to thimerosal to ten years
later. The first study looked at the effect
that thimerosal exposure in early life had
on brain functions, language, behavior,
and coordination. It also looked at the
nueropsychological outcomes 7 to 10
years later, and it found that there were
no associations with thimerosal and the
general intellectual functioning, verbal
memory, executive functioning, behavior
regulation, fine motor coordination,
and language in the children that were
exposed to thimerosal. They did however,
find that there was a small association
between the thimerosal exposure and
tics in boys. A second study looked at thimerosal
exposure within the womb and
in infancy. It compared children with and
without autism, and looked at the exposure
that they had to thimerosal from vaccines
in infancy. It found that there was
no difference in the exposure to thimerosal
between the children that had autism
and those that did not have autism. A
third study, which was funded by the Center
for Disease Control and Prevention,
looked at the long term effect of thimerosal
exposure, which compared the neuropsychological
outcomes of the children
they randomly selected to receive a form
of diphtheria-tetanus-acellular pertussive
vaccine, or DTaP for short, within the first
year of life. One of these contained thimerosal
and the other did not, and ten
years later they were tested for 24 neuropsychocological
outcomes, and the results
did not show that thimerosal in vaccines
were harmful to children. A fourth
study looked at thimerosal in vaccines in
the United States, the United Kingdom,
and Denmark. This was an analysis of
data from “ the US health maintenace
orgainzations, the UK General Practice
Research Database, and the entire country
of Denmark” ( CDC para 4). They all
also failed to find a link between thimerosal
in vaccines and causing autism. A fifth
study looked at thimerosal within childrens
flu shots. This study “measured the
proportion of injection site reactions and
the infections that were reported to the
Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System
after testing three versions of an inactivated
influenza vaccine in children that
were under the age of 2” (CDC para 5).
The three versions that they tested, which
had thimerosal present within them and
ones which did not contain any thimerosal,
found that there was no difference
between the proportion of ISR, rash or
infections. A sixth study looked at whether
or not thimerosal caused neurodevelopmental
disorders with in children. This
study only found “a few statistically significant
associations between exposer
from thimerosal and nueropsychological
functioning” (CDC 6). The results showed
no link between neurodevelopmental disorders
within children and vaccinations
that contained thimerosal.
May 31, 2017 TIME 7