http://www.wholly-water.com/atrizine.htm
Atrazine, Mercury, and Parasites
Life Streams International Mfg. Co..
5203 Moore Road, Westmoreland, NY 13490
1-800-76-WATER
Local (315) 336-3599
WASHINGTON — The U.S. Department of Agriculture has set up projects in Missouri, Iowa, Minnesota, Nebraska, and Ohio to advise farmers on how to protect water sources from atrazine contamination. ...

Atrazine, a chemical in herbicides used by farmers, is contaminating drinking water sources in several Midwestern states and may cause cancer. In northern Missouri, about 80 percent of municipal water systems have detected atrazine in their drinking water. The Illinois EPA found one water system had atrazine levels as high as 30 parts per billion (ppb). ...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that each year in the United States up to 900,000 cases of illness and possibly 900 deaths occur as a result of waterborne microbial infections. Such dangerous organisms include E. coli O157, Cryptosporidium, Giardia, Hepatitis A, and Pfiesteria. ...

ATLANTA, GA — New guidelines raising the level of mercury contamination considered a threat to human health were issued April 19 by the U.S. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (ATSDR), an arm of the federal Department of Health and Human Services.

Humans are often exposed to mercury when they consume (larger) fish caught in mercury-contaminated (fresh lake and river) waters. The ATSDR's new minimal risk level (MRL) for ingestion of mercury is 0.3 micrograms per kilograms of body weight (?g/kg) daily, three times the previous MRL. The new MRL is also three times the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) reference dose of 0.1 ?g/kg, a fact that has led to complaints from clean-water advocates. ...

2

http://www.nature.com/nsu/000106/000106-8.html
Microbial mercury mop
Nature News Service / Macmillan Magazines Ltd 2001
Eleanor Lawrence reports on a new strain of bacteria genetically engineered to clean up soil and water contaminated by toxic radioactive waste.
5 January 2000

Radiation-resistant bacteria that can dispose of (ingest-transmute) heavy metals are being developed to help clean up soil and water contaminated by toxic radioactive waste. Researchers have announced in the journal Nature Biotechnology1 that they have constructed a version of the highly radiation-resistant bacterium Deinococcus radiodurans that converts the toxic mercury in such wastes to a less toxic form.

The United States has a major pollution problem with waste from its nuclear weapons manufacturing programme. From 1945 until the 1980s, around three million cubic metres of radioactive waste was disposed of by burying it in the ground. Leakage of the buried waste at the 3,000 disposal sites has contaminated surrounding soil and groundwater with radioactive uranium-235, heavy metals like mercury and toxic organic solvents such as toluene.

This lethal mix now affects 75 million cubic metres of soil and two billion litres of groundwater, and the cost of cleaning it up using purely physico-chemical technology is estimated at around $265 billion. So the search is on for less expensive ways of detoxifying the contaminated ground.

One of these could be bioremediation.
This is the use of living organisms, usually bacteria or plants, which can break down the pollutants to use as nutrients, or convert them into some less harmful form. The problem with radioactive waste, however, is that most living organisms are highly sensitive to radiation, which kills cells and damages DNA.

Enter Deinococcus, the most radiation-resistant organism known to man. This astounding bacterium grows happily in levels of radioactivity of 60 grays (Gy) per hour -- about ten times the lethal dose for a human -- which is well above those in the waste. It is also quite tolerant of organic solvents.

But Deinococcus does not like mercury, and this, radioactivity apart, is one of the most problematic of the pollutants. In the radioactive waste, mercury occurs in a highly toxic ionic form, 'Hg(II)'. Hassan Brim of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences at Bethesda, Maryland, and colleagues have genetically engineered a suite of mercury-handling genes into Deinococcus, which enable it to convert the Hg(II) into less toxic elemental mercury (Hg), which is volatile and so can disperse, and is also chemically almost inert.

The genes come from the biotechnologist's friend, the bacterium Escherichia coli, which perhaps surprisingly for a bacterium that lives in the hospitable environment of the human gut can detoxify ionic mercury.

The Bethesda team found that they could combine the mercury-detoxifying genes with specialized toluene-degrading genes taken from the harmless soil bacterium Pseudomonas putida. The end result is a strain of Deinococcus that converts mercury, breaks down toluene to use as a source of carbon and energy, and does all this while thriving at radiation levels that no other organism can resist.

3

http://healthyfamiliesnow.org/Article_asp-Record=1053.html
Healthy Families, Healthy Environment - Common Toxins, Mercury.
Mercury is a heavy metal. There are three forms of mercury -- methyl, elemental, and inorganic. Releases of mercury to the environment are usually in the form of elemental or inorganic forms. Mercury concentrations in air are usually low and of little direct concern. But when mercury enters water, biological processes transform it to a highly toxic form – methylmercury – that builds up in fish and animals that eat fish. People are exposed to mercury primarily by eating fish.

Today, the main source of mercury released into the environment is coal-fired power plants, which supply approximately half of the U.S.’s electricity. Exposure to mercury can damage the stomach, large intestine, and lungs. It can cause permanent damage to the kidneys and brain. Methylmercury penetrates the brain and is a potent neurotoxin.

Methylmercury also crosses the placenta and can therefore damage the unborn child. Indeed, the unborn child is the most sensitive to mercury’s damaging effects. Significant exposure during pregnancy to mercury can cause mental retardation, and smaller exposures can result in impairments in language, attention, and memory.

4

http://www.sciradio.com/articles/MercuryAssessments.htm
Mercury Assessments, By: Ann Rose
100 tons of mercury implanted in population teeth will re-circulate and cause mercury pollution.

• Primary effects of mercury exposure are neurological effects impairing motor skills and sensory abilities of pilots
• Mercury impairs reproductive health of man and beast.
• Increases antibiotic and mercury resistant bacteria and transfers it between bacteria strains. Exposure to mercury from amalgam filling triggers antibiotic resistance in bacteria to man. To eliminate antibiotic resistant bacteria mercury exposure must be kept in check.

For 20 years copper amalgams were extensively used mostly in children releasing higher amounts of mercury than standard silver amalgams.

• Data was hidden about dentists getting Multiple Sclerosis And Parkinson’s disease.
• Dental publication on the danger of amalgam fillings was withheld from the public.
• When amalgam fillings are removed health status improved.
• Those with fewer teeth feel worse, get illness and have more symptoms and die early.

5

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=
PubMed&list_uids=12003971&dopt=Abstract&holding=f1000
Prevalence and antibiotic resistance profile of mercury-resistant oral bacteria from children with and without mercury amalgam fillings.
Pike R, Lucas V, Stapleton P, Gilthorpe MS, Roberts G,
Rowbury R, Richards H, Mullany P, Wilson M.
Department of Microbiology, Eastman Dental Institute,
University College London, 256 Gray's Inn Road, London WC1X 8LD, UK.

Of Hg-resistant bacteria, 88% and 92% from the amalgam group and the amalgam-free group, respectively, were streptococci; 41% and 33% were resistant to at least one antibiotic, most frequently tetracycline.

6

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/living/health/7449053.htm
Hardy bacteria escaping hospitals
MORE OUTBREAKS; STAPH GERM FIGHTS MOST ANTIBIOTICS
By Tracy Wheeler
Knight Ridder
Posted on Tue, Dec. 09, 2003

A tough bacterium known as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA, is spreading from hospitals to jails, day care centers and school gyms. It resists common antibiotics and can lead to life-threatening infections.

In the past three years, MRSA outbreaks have been reported among wrestlers, football and rugby players, and fencers, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said. ...

The bacteria spread through shaving cuts and turf burns, combined with the sharing of unwashed towels. ... painful skin infections ....

Typically, MRSA contracted outside a hospital is limited to skin infections and rarely results in severe disease or death, although four children in Minnesota and North Dakota died because of the bacteria in the late 1990s. ...

7

Hospitals' bane
MRSA is much more lethal in hospitals because illnesses or medications have already compromised many patients' immune systems.

Because MRSA is not a reportable disease, it's unknown how many people die of the infection annually. The CDC reports that each year 2 million Americans acquire various infections while hospitalized and that 90,000 die from them.

MRSA is a key player in those numbers, because the CDC reports that nearly 60 percent of patients in intensive care units are infected with the bacteria. In 1989, that figure was 30 percent.

Health professionals say patients can help fight MRSA by not demanding unnecessary antibiotics and by taking the entire course of antibiotics when they are prescribed.

Stopping antibiotics too soon

"gives the organism a chance to take the back burner for a while," said Dr. Elizabeth Koch, a medical epidemiologist with the Ohio state health department. "It learns how to mutate itself against the antibiotic, unless we kill it in the first place."

As for doctors, Tan said, they have to be willing to spend time explaining why antibiotics aren't appropriate in some situations. And they have to order more cultures, to determine which antibiotic will best work against an infection.

"If you really think about it, these bugs are so smart," he said. "They develop resistance to anything you throw at them. You can put them in boiling water for an hour, and some will not die. These are tough bugs."

Parasite INDEX

Pages-by-Topic

Amalgams INDEX