What harm does mercury do to the body?

As we all know, mercury is a heavy metal element that can cause serious chronic poisoning. Many cosmetics contain mercury, and even many unscrupulous merchants, in order to make huge profits, often exceed the mercury content in their products. Many people suffer from chronic poisoning due to long-term use of mercury-containing cosmetics. Initially the skin turns red, then swells and burns, eventually leading to serious damage to your health. Below I will tell you in detail about the harm that mercury brings to our body.

Mercury is a poison that can accumulate in organisms. Both inorganic and organic mercury can accumulate in organisms. Any form of mercury in the environment can be converted into highly toxic methylmercury under certain conditions. Mercury and its compounds are highly toxic, especially its organic compounds. The most toxic is methylmercury. Once methylmercury enters the human body, it spreads throughout the organs and tissues of the body, mainly damaging the nervous system, especially the central nervous system. The most serious damage is to the cerebellum and cerebral hemispheres, and the damage is irreversible.

Methylmercury can also pass through the placental barrier to harm the fetus, causing congenital mercury poisoning, deformities, or dementia. In addition, methylmercury has an inhibitory effect on the formation of sperm cells, reducing male fertility. Humans are harmed by mercury pollution in many ways, but most people do so by eating fish and marine mammals contaminated with mercury.

If a person consumes 0.1 gram of mercury, he will be poisoned and die. Mercury often pollutes the air in vapor form. Mercury and its compounds can enter the human body through different pathways such as the respiratory tract, skin or digestive tract. When mercury enters the human body, it accumulates in the liver, kidneys, brain, heart, and bone marrow, causing neurological poisoning and deep tissue lesions, leading to symptoms such as fatigue, dizziness, tremors, bleeding gums, baldness, numbness of hands and feet, neurasthenia, and even mental confusion, followed by mad convulsions and death. Mercury has adverse effects on the mouth, mucous membranes and teeth. Long-term exposure to high levels of mercury can cause brain damage and death.

The above are the adverse effects of mercury on our body. Many cosmetics can indeed have a beauty effect at first, but will cause pigmentation afterwards and cause irreversible harm to the skin. Moreover, mercury can be absorbed into cosmetics through the skin and cause damage to internal organs. Therefore, we must pay special attention when purchasing cosmetics and not be greedy for small profits and hurt ourselves.