mercury

[Lisa!]

How to measure the amount of mercury in the blood of people who have filled their teeth?I mean how to make a sample of their blood which would allow us to determine the radioactivity and dose of the mercury!Has such a thing been done?

[Morbius]

How to measure the amount of mercury in the blood of people who have filled their teeth?I mean how to make a sample of their blood which would allow us to determine the radioactivity and dose of the mercury!Has such a thing been done?
Lisa,

The naturally occurring isotopes of Mercury are NOT radioactive. You aren't going to find
radioactivity in your dental fillings. Don't let ignorant people tell you that dental X-rays will
make the Mercury radioactive - they DON'T!!!

There are tests for mercury in the blood - it is measured chemically.

However, concern over mercury in fillings is a red herring. The mercury in your fillings is an
amalgam - an alloy - not pure mercury. It is like someone telling you that you are ingesting
deadly Chlorine gas when you eat salt - sodium chloride - because 50% of the atoms in salt
are Chlorine. Chlorine behaves differently in a compound than it does in elemental form.

Forget about these dumb scare stories you see on the Internet.

Dr. Gregory Greenman
Physicist

[Lisa!]

Oh thank you very much, Dr. Greenman!:smile:
You know actually the 2nd part that you mention is the concern ! we wanted to do a research to see if the amalgam is a bit of concern or not. But the part which interests us the most is how to make a sample of blood for measuring any sorta radioactive element in the blood!

[mgb_phys]

we wanted to do a research to see if the amalgam is a bit of concern or not. But the part which interests us the most is how to make a sample of blood for measuring any sorta radioactive element in the blood!
You can measure mercury content in the blood very easily - the problem is knowing if it came from the filling or from eating tuna.
One way to do this would be to add a small quantity of a radioactive isotope of mercury to the metal being used for the fillings and then check for that isotope in the blood. (good luck with the ethics committee)
For mercury you wouldn't be using the radiaoctivity to find it, just to confirm that it was mercury that you put there.
You would need a long lived isotope since it likely takes many years for Hg in fillings to be absorbed (if at all) but you want one that is short lived enough that it wouldn't be found commonly in the environment.

For lots of other bio-metabolism studies you do use C14 tracers.

[Bob S]

The mercury in your fillings is a liquid metal used for amalgamating. This far less dangerous than the organic methyl mercury in fish. If metallic mercury were dangerous, how many kids in the 1950's and 50's would dead now because they bit the end off a mercury thermometer?