Pandora's Lab: Seven Stories of Science Gone Wrong

by Paul A. Offit

It’s not hard to understand how this could have happened. Mercury is never going to sound good. (There’s no such thing as the National Association for the Appreciation of Heavy Metals.) Large quantities of mercury have clearly been shown to cause harm. Indeed, environmental mercury contaminations caused by a chemical spillage in Minamata Bay, Japan, or by fumigating grain in Iraq damaged hundreds of babies and fetuses. Mercury, however, which is present in the Earth’s crust, is hard to avoid. Anything we drink that’s made from water on this planet (including breast milk and infant formula) will contain small quantities of mercury. These small quantities of mercury aren’t harmful. Only large quantities are harmful. If small quantities of mercury were harmful, we’d have to move to a different planet. Of interest, the quantities of mercury contained in vaccines were far less than those contained in breast milk and infant formulas. And mercury isn’t the only heavy metal to which we are routinely exposed. We all have trace quantities of metals like cadmium, beryllium, thallium, and even arsenic in our blood. But at quantities far less than those required to do harm. Unfortunately, we seem incapable of learning the most important lesson in toxicology: The dose makes the poison. For example, if people drink several gallons of water quickly (as has occurred during fraternity hazings), they might exceed their body’s ability to hold onto the mineral sodium. As the level of sodium in...