Mercury found in our food - top brands:

[dieselboy]

Quite worrying. Those that don't know what mercury does to you you should read that first.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=...3wNlGWaew7kuQA

[Albannach]

Hyperbole. We used to play with mercury at school, never did us any harm.

[dieselboy]

Hyperbole. We used to play with mercury at school, never did us any harm.

I've played with mercury. There is playing with it on the table with cut - free hands and there is injestion - completely different things.

[rodsurf]

interesting that, guessing it was an american test going by most of the stuff in the list ive never heard of ??????

[Albannach]

What is 350 ppt in microgrammes? And ppt of what? Those are just lists of numbers, they mean nothing.

Remember, fish (some more than others) contain elevated levels of Mercury, that's not on th list and does tend to be eaten by humans.

Incidently, the elevated levels of Mercury in fish is what makes Polar Bear liver poisonous to humans...

[rodsurf]

just wiki'd ppt its either parts per trillion or parts per thousand or its a powerpoint template ?

[Albannach]

just wiki'd ppt its either parts per trillion or parts per thousand or its a powerpoint template ?

Aye but parts per whatever of what? Is it one part mercury per trillion (it can't be thousand, otherwise there would be 30% mercury in thon quaker stuff) bananas?

[rodsurf]

could it be per serving like a 30 gramm serving has 80 parts per trillion per 30 grams ?????

[dieselboy]

It's parts per powerpointpresentation..

Anyway, yes mercury is in fish, understandable.. But breakast cerial?? Oat bars? Healthy food! And why doesnt it state that in the contents?

[BUSHWHACKER]

Quite worrying. Those that don't know what mercury does to you you should read that first.

http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=...3wNlGWaew7kuQA

Smoking kills more people than mercury, but people still smoke.
Driving a 4X4 will eventually 'kill the planet' but we've all got one.

[slobodan]

If you ingest too much you could become Mercury man!

[Albannach]

Anyway, yes mercury is in fish, understandable.. But breakast cerial?? Oat bars? Healthy food! And why doesnt it state that in the contents?

Because it's a naturally occuring element, it's all around us. Just like radiation, it's everywhere.

On the subject of radiation. Industrial controls on NORM (Normally Occuring Radioactive Material) mean that a cook on an Oil Rig will be exposed to less radiation than a cook in a countryside hotel. Ignore lists like the one you saw, they're meaningless as mere statistics (much like the NORM example), they need context.

[Rustinho]

First up, having done safety assessments/recommendations/etc in labs I'm familiar with the topic at hand.

According to an MSDS (material safety data sheet) for mercury I just had a quick squizz at, the occupational exposure limit for inhalation is 150ug/m3/46 days.

That is roughly 150,000 ppm (parts per million) inhaled consistantly for 46 days.
For ingestion you're looking at a level of 0.1 ppm, that'd be 100,000,000,000 ppt.

Try to imagine the difference between a grain of salt in a swimming pool compared to a whole swimming pool full of salt.

The figures quoted on the table are in parts per trillion judging by the detection limits quoted.

Without looking at the study and at mercury toxicity in greater detail I can't honestly say whether it is perfectly safe or not but typically for someone wanting to perpetuate a scare story, the author of the table has thrown a load of numbers together that look frightening. This arouses my suspicions straight away. After all there are lies, damned lies and statistics... (which I may be just as guilty of - you decide!)

EDIT: In answer to the parts per trillion of what query - ppt exposure limits are calculated as a dimensionless quantity relative to their molecular (or in this case atomic) mass.

[Hazzo]

Yeah, wouldn't worry about it the ####in EU will be along to legislate shortly then we'll have the "safety" experts waffling $hit then the newest Edwina clone will ban eggs/bread/butter/fish/chips or whatever and the whole of Scotland will die of starvation due to their whole staple diet being removed from the food chainH