smiled broadly. “I like a good story if it’s told well. That’s the reason I am sometimes forced to tell them myself.”
Ignoring Crockett’s levity, Trent moved on. “It’s a bit of a history lesson, but one we can use. Early last year, a research scientist, her name was Katherine, was working in a chromium research laboratory when she accidentally spilled a tiny drop of liquid mercury over her protective glove. She knew the risks. Mercury is second only to plutonium as the most toxic chemical on the planet and that it could kill if you if you got too close, so she had taken all the precautions. Besides the gloves, she was wearing eye goggles and worked under a ventilated hood that sucked up the chemicals fumes. When she accidentally spilled that drop of the mercury, she thought nothing of it. Later, after finishing her project, she removed her protective gloves and gear, washed her hands, cleaned her instruments and went home.”
Trent paused, as if choosing his words. “Now remember. What she spilled on her gloves was just a drop of liquid, a tiny sparkling trace.”
Crockett continued his respectful silence as Trent took a deep breath. He didn’t know where Trent’s story was leading, but he was willing to wait it out.
Trent was apologetic. “Let me shorten this up a bit. About five months after she spilled the mercury, she was working late again in the lab, and she thought she had caught stomach flu. The next morning, she started losing her balance, bumping into doors, that sort of thing. A couple of days later, she couldn’t walk, her speech became slurred and her hands were trembling uncontrollably. The initial diagnosis was that she had a virus, but that seemed awfully vague to her. She knew there was something seriously wrong, so she asked her husband to call in a specialist. A week later, after a series of tests, they had their answer. She had mercury poisoning. Somehow, the little drop of mercury that rolled across her glove had penetrated her skin. Eight months after she spilled that little drop of mercury, Elizabeth died.”
Crockett’s eyes remained locked on Trent. “I don’t mean to be callous, but I assume this has some sort of point,” he offered politely.
“There is!” Trent bellowed. “Katherine was a scientist. She knew she was dying. She urged doctors and scientists to learn everything they could from her accident. Before her accident, virtually nothing was known about the extraordinary dangers of mercury. That little drop of mercury seeped through her glove like a drop of water through facial tissue. What she spilled was dimethlymercury, a substance that is ridiculously easy to order in research catalogs. Obviously, it was more deadly than anyone had imagined. She couldn’t have known how bad the stuff really was. Truth is, no one knew. Saddest of all, by the time the symptoms showed, it was too late.”
Crockett leaned back in his chair “I know you know where you are going with this, but I still don’t understand. Right now, all I know is that you are no fan of mercury.”
“All I can say is that ever since the mining of mercury began it’s been used for all sorts of questionable purposes. Overall, I believe it would have been better to have left it in the ground but it’s too late now. We are all benefiting from both the good and the bad mercury and we have to deal with the consequences. I only told you that little story to draw your attention to the dangers of mercury in general because mercury comes in many forms and even more ways of being exposed to it. I think that the same ignorance displayed in Katherine’s case is happening all over again, just in a far bigger arena. My premise is simple. I believe our children are being exposed to too much mercury.”
Although he was certain that his confusion was obvious, Crockett asked his question anyway. “How do you mean?”
“The problem is mercury is everywhere, not only in medicines. It’s in the food we eat, in the air, the sea, and who knows where else. It is very common and it bioaccumulates.”
Unable to remember the last time he had participated in such a one-sided conversation, Crockett suddenly found himself in unknown territory. He was temporarily at a loss for words. Several seconds passed before he gathered the courage to ask the obvious. “You’ll have to excuse me. When I was in college, the only mandatory science class was biology, and all I retained from that experience was my delight in experimenting with frogs. What the hell does bioaccumulates mean?” he demanded.
“It just means that it mercury builds up in the system gradually.”
“Like eating too many doughnuts?” Crockett joked.
“Sure! Eat too many doughnuts and your body uses what it can for energy the stores what it can’t use as fat. You gain a few pounds. In the case of too much mercury, it’s called bioaccumulation. The problem when you store mercury in your body is that it can become dangerous, even lethal. It is a form of chronic poisoning.”
“Where’s all this excess mercury coming from?”
“Some from our environment, like the burning of coal that eventually gets into the atmosphere or from homes and buildings built with lumber that was treated with mercury as a fungicide. Some comes from fish harvested from contaminated waters. Water dumps and streams around mining areas would be a good example. Eventually, those waters evaporate into the atmosphere and rain collects the molecules and dumps them right back to earth reinventing the problem over and over. It’s a continuing the process from many arenas, not just those.”
Crockett knew a little about fish and mercury poisoning from his congressional days, but was a little hazy on the subject. “But why so much concern with fish?”
“Because, in many countries, fish is a major component of the population’s diet. High mercury concentrations coming from contaminated fish eventually leads to ingesting more mercury than can’t be eliminated. That’s where bioaccumulation comes in. Mercury is a neurotoxin. No matter how you are exposed to it, mercury simply builds up in our system and doesn’t dissolve. Eventually, it could lead to brain damage.”
“You’re losing me here! How does it cause brain damage?”
Trent paused, as if he were trying to think of a way to simplify matters. Then, “Have you ever heard the expression Mad as a Hatter?”
Finally, Crockett felt he could participate in their lopsided conversation. A broad smile flashed across his face. “I only know of the Mad Hatter character from Alice in Wonderland.’
“That’s a start! In the mid-eighteen hundreds, when the book was written, the phrase was common. Hatters were exactly that. They made hats, and Hatters really did go mad. The chemicals used in hat-making included mercurous nitrate. They used it in curing to stiffen the felt. People working in poorly ventilated workshops would breathe methyl mercury in the form of vapor over prolonged periods of time and it accumulated in the brain, resulting in mercury poisoning. Victims developed severe and uncontrollable muscular tremors and twitching limbs, called hatter’s shakes. In advanced cases, hatters developed hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms. Hence the phrase Mad as a Hatter. That’s what chronic mercury poisoning can do!”
Crockett steered the conversation back to Trent’s earlier statement about children. “Well, I am certain our children aren’t making hats, and I can’t believe that they are eating too much fish.”
“I am not just talking about fish! I used that as an example to demonstrate how cumulative mercury poisoning can occur. There’s more to it than that. Environmentally, mercury can be found in many different places.”
“I’m listening.”
“I believe that young children around the world are quite possibly being unnecessarily exposed to dangerous levels of mercury, but the source is not only
