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Mercury levels in Flu shots and tuna

Paradox74

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http://www.thecitizen.com/archive/main/archive-050302/pt-05_mercury.html

It appears that someone has made a comparison of the mercury levels between a can of tuna and flu vaccines:

Chiron is the only manufacturer that offered an adult dose of flu vaccine containing just a trace amount of mercury (1 mcg).
The currently available flu shot (from Aventis Pasteur) comes in a pediatric dose containing a trace amount of mercury (0.5 mcg) and an adult dose containing a higher (standard) amount of mercury (25 mcg).

The offshoot is that pregnant women and others (including children over age 3) who get an adult dose of the flu shot do not have a trace-mercury option this season.

However, this isn’t meant to imply that the standard-mercury adult dose might be unsafe.

One way to gain perspective is to compare the amount of mercury in the flu shot with the amount found naturally in tuna fish.

According to the EPA, light tuna, considered to be low in mercury, contains an average of .12 PPM (parts per million) of mercury (www.cfsan.fda.gov/~frf/ sea-mehg.html).

That works out to 0.12 mcg of mercury per gram of tuna. A typical 6-oz (170 grams) can of light tuna would thus contain 20.4 mcg of mercury, on average.
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It appears that there's 20 times the amount of mercury in a can of light tuna versus a flu shot...strange. You don't hear the Jenny McCarthy crowd ranting about this stuff.
Here is the author's conclusion:

That’s very close to the 25 mcg of mercury contained in the adult dose of the flu shot. The bottom line: For most people, the risks and miseries of getting the flu far outweigh any risks that might be associated with mercury in the flu vaccine.
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Wait, what?
 
Actually this was pointed many time over, but ignored by those, jsut like the fact that in pediatric vaccine as a precautionary principle there is no thiomersal. Also the mercury is not even free mercury, but rather thiomersal an oragnometallic (organomercurial) compound, so when you ehar 20 microgram per dose, it is in reality 20 microgram of mercury *bound* in the organic molecule , it is not as if it was the same as ingesting mercury in tuna (and IIRC in the tuna it is not organo metallic, but metallo-complex, or even mercury salts so it can potentially easily released in the organism).
 
I'm still planning to make me a tee shirt that says, "Skip the tuna sandwich and vaccinate your kids".
 
Must be that homeopathic mercury. If there's hardly any, it has a strong effect, but if you eat a lot if it, like in your tuna, it has no effect at all. </woo>
 
Paul Offit was interviewed in USA Today in November, 2010:

Thimerosal contains ethyl mercury, which has not been shown to cause harm, rather than methyl mercury, the type that can cause brain damage, Offit says. While most laypeople don't pay attention to such differences, they're important. Consider the huge difference between ethyl alcohol — or drinking alcohol, found in wine and beer — and methyl alcohol, or wood alcohol, which can cause blindness.

"If you have zero tolerance for mercury, you have to move to another planet," Offit says. "We all have mercury and formaldehyde and aluminum in our bodies. Vaccines don't add to what we normally encounter every day."
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http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/health/medical/coldflu/2010-11-15-myths-flu_N.htm

Just don't move here. :D
 
Keep in mind that the chemical binding of the mercury (Thimerosal) in the shot is very different from the mercury in the Tuna. I would say that the can of tuna, or sushi is far more dangerous by more than an order of magnitude. The body's ability to flush ethylmercury (what thimerosal decays to) is also much greater than the ability to process methylmercury (how it comes in tuna).
 
Even so, NOBODY has had a case of mercury poisoning associated with eating commercial fish.
 
casebro said:
Even so, NOBODY has had a case of mercury poisoning associated with eating commercial fish.
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Not an acute case, but the FDA and other countries are aware of risk of chronic mercury toxicity associated with eating a lot of fish.

There have been products taken off the market because they exceeded the maximum limit (in the USA that's 480ug/lb).

Having said that... some antivaxxers are aware of this argument and they do have a canned (hah! get it?) response. The first is to point out that injecting something is almost always more acute than eating it (which is true), and the second line of defense is to hand-wave and say that mercury in tuna is 'natural' and therefore not very harmful by definition.
 
blutoski said:
The first is to point out that injecting something is almost always more acute than eating it (which is true), and the second line of defense is to hand-wave and say that mercury in tuna is 'natural' and therefore not very harmful by definition.
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It's natural in the sense that the fish naturally ate other organisms that had been naturally exposed to mercury from industrial pollution.
 
blutoski said:
Not an acute case, but the FDA and other countries are aware of risk of chronic mercury toxicity associated with eating a lot of fish.

There have been products taken off the market because they exceeded the maximum limit (in the USA that's 480ug/lb).

.
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" exceeded the maximum limit " doth not a case of disease equal.

To the best I can find, the only cases of oceanic poisonings are Minimata, and some Nordic inlet . Plus an incident in Iraq, where the people were given "seed wheat" that was treated with mercury as an anti-fungal. The ate it. Other individual cases were industrial in origin.

But nobody ever suffered any actual harm from canned tuna. OR vaccines.
 
casebro said:
" exceeded the maximum limit " doth not a case of disease equal.
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Of course, but the point is that they set the limits because exceeding them is considered likely to cause illness. Mercury poisoning from food is rare because of regulation and inspection, not because it's technically impossible.




casebro said:
To the best I can find, the only cases of oceanic poisonings are Minimata, and some Nordic inlet . Plus an incident in Iraq, where the people were given "seed wheat" that was treated with mercury as an anti-fungal. The ate it. Other individual cases were industrial in origin.
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Acute. But chronic toxicity has many examples. It's well studied in Japan, and actually considered an important public health subject. Harm caused by chronic exposure is the reason most nations have an upper limit and [the FDA even advises against certain types of seafood during pregnancy] and to eat some fish, but not to exceed certain limits, depending on the type of fish.





casebro said:
But nobody ever suffered any actual harm from canned tuna. OR vaccines.
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Well, probalby not from thimerosal at least. Obviously [lots of people have been harmed by vaccines].

So I hesitate to make a blanket statement that they are 'safe,' but it's just clear that the benefits outweigh the risks.
 
godless dave said:
It's natural in the sense that the fish naturally ate other organisms that had been naturally exposed to mercury from industrial pollution.
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Basically.

Sadly, I suspect the fallout of explaining this is to make antivaxxers avoid tuna, rather than accept vaccines.
 
There have been products taken off the market because they exceeded the maximum limit (in the USA that's 480ug/lb).
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ug/lb? That's an odd unit.

According to the NIOSH Pocket Guide (2010) the IDLH level for mercury compounts (CAS # 7439-97-6) is 10 mg/m^3. FPPE required is skin protection; basically Modified Level D. The IDLH for mercury alkyl compoutnds is 2 mg/m^3, and requires Modified Level D with splash goggles. I don't have an MSDS on hand (which is odd, because my HAZWOPER stuff is right here). Anyway, if we're going to discuss the effects of murcury that's the stuff we should be talking about. ;)

" exceeded the maximum limit " doth not a case of disease equal.
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The problem with Hg is that it's a persistant bioaccumulating toxic chemical, meaning that once it gets into you it doesn't necessarily go away. Now to get in it has to be bioavailable--and that's the part that will drive anti-vaxers into a frothing rage (they insist that mercury=mercury, meaning that even stuff which cannot possibly be used by any biological process and which is passed through the body completely should be treated as though it were poison). But once it finds a way in you're stuck with it.
 
Based on Homeopathic principles, as we all know has been clearly demonstrated, the LESS mercury the more impact it has. This analysis obviously bears this out, namely, the greater amount of mercury in tuna (eaten often) is significantly less harmful than the trace amounts (taken once) in the flu shot.

Case closed.

:boxedin:
 
You want to eat relatively short lived cold water fish like cod. The longer a fish lives the more mercury it accumulates, like the ancient long life Sturgeon, where the rich get their caviar from.
 
Dinwar, meters cubed is usually a measure for air pollutants.

food would be measures by weight, mg/kg or ug/mg.
 
Yeah, I thought so, but couldn't find it. I should look up the mercury MSDS...
 
The Greater Fool said:
Based on Homeopathic principles, as we all know has been clearly demonstrated, the LESS mercury the more impact it has. This analysis obviously bears this out, namely, the greater amount of mercury in tuna (eaten often) is significantly less harmful than the trace amounts (taken once) in the flu shot.

Case closed.

:boxedin:
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Furthermore, we all know that the potency changes if the concoction is shaken. Now, homeopaths may argue that the tuna was not shaken, and therefore not potentized, but I assure you, if I were a pup tuna, and someone told me that when I grew up I'd be caught in a net and stuffed in a can for some human to chow down on, I'd be pretty shaken!
 
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