revised final - Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry ...

MERCURY 170
2. HEALTH EFFECTS
(Blayney et al. 1997; Nierenberg et al. 1998). The spill was cleaned and the gloves disposed of. Hair
analysis on a long strand of hair revealed that, after a brief lag time, mercury content rose rapidly to almost
1,100 ppm (normal level 50 ppm), and then slowly declined, with a half-life of
74.6 days. These results support the occurrence of one or several episodes of exposure, and are consistent
with laboratory notebook accounts of a single accidental exposure. Testing of family members, laboratory
coworkers, and laboratory surfaces also failed to reveal any unsuspected mercury spills or other cases of
toxic blood or urinary mercury levels. Permeation tests subsequently performed on disposable latex gloves
similar to those the patient had worn at the time of the lone exposure revealed that dimethylmercury
penetrates such gloves rapidly and completely, with penetration occurring in 15 seconds or less and perhaps
instantly. Severe neurotoxicity developed 5 months postexposure and the patient died 9 months
postexposure. The mercury content of hair, blood, and urine were monitored from 5 months postexposure
(i.e., following admission of the patient to the hospital) until the patient died. Based on the half-lives and
kinetics of mercury in the body, the hair and blood levels were used to estimate the total body burden and
the amount of the initial acute dermal dose. They determined that a dose of 0.44 mL of liquid
Dimethylmercury (about 1,344 mg), if completely absorbed, would have been sufficient to have produced
the levels observed in the patient. This amount is in good agreement with the patient’s account and the
laboratory records on the amount spilled. Some inhalation exposure, however, could also have occurred
during the cleanup of the spill, so this finding needs additional confirmation.
Infants exposed to diapers that had been treated with a phenylmercury fungicide exhibited higher urinary
levels of mercury than unexposed infants (Gotelli et al. 1985). In rats, dermal absorption of phenylmercuric
acetate from the vaginal tract was 75% of the dose within 8 hours after administration (Laug and Kunze
1949).
2.3.1.4 Other Routes of Exposure
There is some information on the subcutaneous injection of metallic mercury. Schwarz et al. (1996)
describe a case history of a female nurse who accidentally plunged a mercury thermometer into her left
hand while shaking it. Radiographic imaging revealed that some liquid metallic mercury had infiltrated into
the soft tissues of her palm (amount unspecified). The diffusely distributed mercury could not be removed
surgically. No immediate follow-up mercury levels in blood or urine were reported. A slightly elevated
blood mercury concentration (15 µg/L, toxic level >50) was reported 2 years after this event, which then