“I thought they took the mercury out of vaccines.”

Unfortunately, too many people are unaware that many vaccines, including some for children, still contain significant amount of thimerosal. Thimerosal is the ethyl-mercury preservative that has been used in vaccines since the 1930’s; thimerosal has been used so long that it predates the FDA and, in fact, has never been properly safety tested as a result.

The FDA in 1999 made a recommendation to manufacturers to remove the mercury from vaccines on the CDC’s recommended schedule for ages birth to three when they realized that children were receiving a cumulative dose of mercury that was potentially harmful. They did not recall the mercury-containing vaccines, nor were they banned. Instead, they allowed existing stocks to be used up, which took several years. Note that the FDA’s directive never applied to vaccines not on the CDC’s recommended childhood schedule (for example, Diphtheria/Tetanus).

http://www.safeminds.org/protect-yourself/vaccines.html


“The amount of mercury is negligible and couldn’t possibly hurt anyone.”

This is the sort of statement that could only be made by someone who hasn’t done the math. Let’s start with some facts:

Thimerosal is about half ethyl-mercury (49.4%) by weight.
There is very little data on the toxicokinetics of thimerosal (ethyl-mercury). Although the practice has been validated by the FDA, we are currently relying on population studies based on methyl-mercury exposure to guess the “safe” dose of ethyl-mercury, which is a different chemical compound.
What data we have so far from human and primate studies indicates that, while ethyl-mercury clears the blood faster than methyl-mercury, ethyl-mercury also results in a higher amount of inorganic mercury in the brains of primates compared to primates exposed to comparable amounts of methyl-mercury (Burbacher et al. 2005). The half-life of inorganic mercury in different parts of the primate brain ranges from 227 to 540 days (Vahter et al. 1994, 1995).
Mercury is bioaccumulative. It builds up in tissues over time. Tweet