According to Merritt R. Turetsky from Michigan State University in East Lansing, Michigan, mercury that has been released into the atmosphere from industrial sources, has a great affinity for organic materials such as peat and rich forest soils.  This is important as whenever a forest fire burns, mercury is released back into the atmosphere.  Previous research had suggested that this release was a paltry 23 tons in the Northern Hemisphere (as compared to industry dumping of 4,400 to 7,500 tons) but the new calculations made by Dr. Turetsky et al have put that figure at a more robust 340 tons annually.

Let’s put this into prospective.  If we think about the fact that about 200 milligrams are lethal to humans (goes up and down dependent on a number of issues like genetics and environment as well as the type of mercury) and if we release say a mid-range number of 5,500 tons of mercury into the atmosphere, what kind of number are we really talking about?

5,500 tons of mercury translates to 24,250,549 kilograms which then breaks down to 24,250,848,840,337 milligrams.  This is 24 and a quarter trillion milligrams. Now if we estimate that the total human population is about 6.5 billion, this means that we are pumping 3791 milligrams of mercury per human being into the environment.  That is 18 times the lethal dose.  Now of course, most people don’t get exposed to that much mercury but we also have to understand that this is a bioaccumulative toxin.  It keeps building up in our systems over the years.

Let’s look at another reality.  If we take a guess that we are only going to come in contact with 1% of that mercury, how long before we hit the lethal dose? In only 5.4 years we will be exposed to the lethal dose.  Of course, we do excrete mercury as we get exposed, some better than others.  Let’s now suppose that we excrete 75% of that mercury (it’s probably less).  We would then have accumulated the lethal dose in 21.44 years. If we excrete 90% then we would hit that level in 54 years. Frightening isn’t it?