You're right about the "trace amounts," but here are a few a useful snippets:
During the recent controversy over the safety of thimerosal in vaccines, toxicologists have assumed that the toxicity of ethylmercury is equivalent to the toxicity of methylmercury. The primary environmental exposure is through consumption of predator fish. A 6-ounce can of tuna fish contains an average of 17 micrograms of mercury. A pediatric dose of hepatitis B vaccine contains very little more mercury than that.
and
The FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation & Research (CBER) began by adding up the total amount of mercury given to children through vaccines in the U.S. immunization schedule. Thimerosal was present in over 30 licensed vaccines in the U.S. in concentrations of 0.003% to 0.01%. According to the agency's calculations, an infant six months old, receiving all vaccine doses on schedule, would receive:
75 micrograms of mercury from three doses of DTP,
75 micrograms from three doses of Hib, and
37.5 micrograms from three doses of hepatitis B vaccine;
for a total of 187.5 micrograms of mercury.
That second one is important because it refers specifically to vaccines that
do contain Thimerosal, and even the amounts of mercury are incredibly small. How much smaller would they be in the Thimerosal-free vaccines commonly in use since 2000?
It should additionally be noted that ethylmercury is not metabolized in the same was as methylmercury, but guidelines about the safety of Thimerosal were based on data pertaining to methylmercury; data for ethylmercury was limited, so for the sake of caution it was assumed that the two forms are metabolized in roughly equivalent ways.
In short, even in the worst case possible, the amount of mercury absorbed from an entire course of vaccines is very small even when compared with other environmental sources of mercury, which in any case isn't the same form of mercury as what comes out of Thimerosal.
Excerpts from
www.healing-arts.org
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