Sisters with mercury exposure.
The same iron pot in which their father had boiled lead with mercury (from a glass thermometer) for the purpose of alchemy, was also used for cooking in the kitchen. Although his wife had died of mercury poisoning, and his 14-year-old and 11-year-old daughters were found to excrete 322 and 455 micrograms/l mercury in the urine, respectively, (1-10 micrograms/l in controls), he stubbornly refused to give permission for them to be examined further. Nine months later, the daughters were permitted to be sent to our clinical ward. While the blood level of mercury had already come down to near normal, its excessive deposition in hair, kidneys and other parts of the body as well as its excessive urinary excretion, were still persistent (beyond tenfold the normal). According to our measurement values, mercury ranged from 14 to 49 micrograms/g in every 1-cm-piece of 10 cm hair of the elder sister, and ranged from 21 to 85 micrograms/g in 14 cm hair from the younger sister. About a 75% decrease in mercury deposition was estimated during these 9 months, based on the speculation of 1.5 cm/month hair-lengthening.