>From "Bernard Windham" <berniew1@earthlink.net>

I asssume people are aware that the information released on mercury in
women and infants and the associated health risks is inaccurate and
unscientific, related to what is known from the medical and clinical
literature. The document appears to me to be more political than scientific
and should be at least footnoted with disclaimers. There have been hundreds
or thousands of medical and clinical studies on these issues and they are
almost totally ignored in their protocol and writeups.   For example they
wrote:
"The CDC found that 5 percent of women of childbearing age had levels of
mercury in their blood at or exceeding the government's safety level for
exposure for the developing fetus, and an additional 5 percent of women of
childbearing age tested just below the safety threshold.Mercury is a
powerful neurotoxin that can cause lowered intelligence, developmental
delays and behavioral disorders at low doses in young children and children
exposed in the womb. Pregnant women are most often exposed to mercury by
eating contaminated fish.Young children and the developing fetus are
generally more vulnerable to health effects from a wide variety of
pollutants because their systems are still developing. Children also eat,
drink and breathe more air per pound of body weight than adults."
***************************************************

      Blood tests are documented in the medical literature and in hundreds
of thousands of tests by medical labs of people suffering from mercury
toxicity to not be a valid or reliable test of mercury body burden or
mercury toxicity.  Blood tests are a very inaccurate and unreliable measure
of health risk from mercury,  mainly measuring recent organic mercury
exposure rather than total body burden or toxicity impacts, of which
susceptability factors like immune reactivity and metabolic
factors(porphyrins,etc.) are important factors to consider. A large portion
of the population has significant effects well below the level that others
are significantly affected.  But also the fetus and infants have been
documented to usually have  accumulated higher mercury levels than their
mothers and the largest source for most is from the mother's amalgam dental
fillings, and from
vaccinations(www.home.earthlink.net/~berniew1/kidshg.html), not from fish.

Note that mother's exposure to mercury from RhoGam shots(RH negative
factor) and flu vaccinations and infant vaccinations have been found to be
highly correlated with infant burdens and infant conditions like autism,
ADD, PDD,etc.  

Documentation snipped from large paper:

Doctors and researchers have traditionally tended to use blood tests to
test for mercury exposure, without the understanding from more recent
experience that has found blood tests mainly relevant to recent exposure to
methylmercury, not mercury vapor or inorganic mercury body burden. While
even methyl mercury has a relatively short half life of about 2 months,
mercury vapor has been found to have an extremely short half-life in the
blood[8-10] since the vapor form rapidly crosses cellular membranes
including the blood-brain barrier and placenta, where it is rapidly
oxidized to inorganic forms. While the half life of vapor in the blood has
been found to be less than 10 seconds[8], the inorganic form does not
readily cross cellular membranes resulting in accumulation in the body
organs, especially the brain where the half life can be over 20
years[11,12]. The form of mercury found in the blood by blood tests is thus
mostly organic[9,13](even though the largest exposure to most is to vapor,
www.home.earthlink.net/~berniew1/damspr1.html), while most of the mercury
in body organs and urine is mostly inorganic. Thus blood is mostly a test
for recent organic mercury exposure, not total exposure or body burden.
While some of the mercury vapor from amalgam is converted to methyl mercury
in the mouth and intestines, enough to make amalgam the largest source of
methyl mercury in most women and infants(31,
www.home.earthlink.net/~berniew1/damspr12.html), most is converted to
inorganic mercury and found in the cells of organs and in urine and feces.

A challange urine test using a chelator is documented to be a more accurate
measure of mercury body burden, and hair tests and urine tests are the most
common tests used by doctors testing and treating people for mercury
toxicity. While more useful than blood tests, the latter are also not
reliable tests for mercury body burden or toxicity effects but are useful
in conjunction with other tests. Other tests on functions affected by
mercury and tests for metabolic damage such as the urine fractionated
porphyrin test(FDA approved for mercury) and for immune reactivity(such as
MELISA, www.melisa.org) are used for this purpose. Susceptability factors
such as immune reactivity and porphyrin generation are as important as dose
in mercury toxicity effects. These are easily measured though tests cost
money.

Based on animal studies using rats, sheep, and monkeys as well as human
studies, mercury from amalgam in the blood of pregnant women crosses the
placenta and appears in amniotic fluid and fetal blood, liver, and
pituitary gland within 2 days of placement [10,14,15, 34-36,43-47,60,/54].
Studies have found a significant correlation between number of amalgam
fillings of the mother and the level of mercury in the fetus, infants, and
young children[10,14,15,34-40], and also with the level in mother's milk
[10,38-42]. Breast milk has been found to increase the bioavailability of
inorganic mercury, which was found to be excreted to milk from blood at a
higher level than organic mercury(41,44,61). The main mechanism of transfer
was found to be binding to albumin(45). For non-occupationally exposed
populations and populations without high fish consumption, these studies
found dental amalgams appear to be the main source of mercury in breast
milk and the fetus, but significant levels of methyl mercury(from amalgam
and fish) are also often found in breast milk [43,44,46,54,61]. U.S. ATSDR
staff[62] indicate that under normal circumstances mercury in mother's milk
should be under 1.7 ug/L, and 3.5 ug/L appears to be an adequate screening
level for health risk. They indicate that there is evidence that
contaminated breast milk is a source of potential risk to infants. An
Italian study indicates that a commonly used mercury tolerance level for
human milk is 4 ppb(43).

Mercury is often stored in breast milk and the fetus at much higher levels
than that in the mother [10,36,38-46,60,61/54]. Milk from mothers with 7 or
more fillings was found to have levels of mercury approximately 10 times
that of amalgam free mothers. The milk sampled ranged from 0.2 to 57 ug/L.
In a population of German women, the concentration of mercury in early
breast milk ranged from 0.2 to 20.3 ug/L. After 2 months laction the level
had declined and was 0.1 to 11.7 ug/L[64]. The level of mercury in
umbilical cord blood, meconium, and placenta is usually higher than that in
mother's blood[43- 47].

Meconium(first stool) level appears to be the most reliable indicator of
fetal mercury exposure and often has significant levels when there are low
levels in mother's blood and cord blood(46c). The level of maternal blood
or hair mercury is significantly correlated with mercury level in meconium
and in nursing infants , so maternal tests can be easily used as a screen
for developmental dangers[43-47,127]. But fetal levels can be significant
when there are low levels in maternal blood(46c).

The highest levels of mercury are usually found in the pituitary gland of
the fetus which affects development of the endocrine, immune, and
reproductive systems. Mercury has been well documented to be an endocrine
system disrupting substance in animals and people, preferentially
accumulating in and disrupting function of the pituitary
gland[10,12,39,65], hypothalamus, and thyroid gland[12,65-67]; along with
disrupting or blocking enzyme production processes[57,68-73], glucose
transfer[57], and many hormonal functions[74-79] at very low levels of
exposure. The pituitary gland controls many of the body's endocrine system
functions and secretes hormones that control most bodily processes,
including the immune system and reproductive systems[79]. The hypothalamus
regulates body temperature and many metabolic processes.

References: www.home.earthlink.net/~berniew1/fetaln.html

B. Windham,  President, DAMS, Inc. berniew1@earthlink.net