1 reply to this topic

[nidhogg]

I am under the impression that there is a huge misconception regarding heavy metal poisoning on these forums, i.e people freak out over possible impurities in supplements.

Am i missing something? afaik its not a big deal and is overly exaggerated

Mercury contaminated supplements are in the form of inorganic mercury. Inorganic mercury has very poor bioavailability, similar to other inorganic metals(magnesium, iron, zinc - oxide). It has also very poor solubility in lipids and any absorbed traces will be readily excreted via feces and urine. Inorganic mercury also does not cross the blood brain barrier as well as its organic counterpart.
Most probable route of poisoning is through inhalation and transdermal penetration.

Methylmercury is the organic version, which is readily and completely absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract. It has high lipid solubility. It readily crosses the blood brain barrier. It has to be converted to inorganic mercury before excreted thus potentiating accumulation, chemically speaking it follows first order kinetics.
This is what is spoken of when mentioning mercury in hazardous context, i.e fish ingestion.

Lead & Arsenic follows the same principals as inorganic mercury, i.e you are constantly exposed to it in a much higher risk than that from oral supplement ingestion, especially if you live in a industrial area. Approx 1% of serum lead levels is stored in bone, rest is excreted.

Bottom line is, oral ingestion of inorganic contaminants is nothing to sweat about, unless ofc you consume heavily contaminated products. Consider the WHO standards of <10ppm which is a neglectable amount even if chronically consumed.

So what with all the china source bashing and faking HPLC results?

Even the failed HPLC purity test ive seen posted showed <100ppm heavy metals, but consumers make it out to be as if they consumed pure liquid mercury. This is also probably why there possibly persists so much HPLC faking. Hell if i was a source i probably wouldnt trash kilos of quality products just because the lead content is 5 ppm above guidelines either.

If im wrong, please enlighten me.

[niner]

All life forms have been exposed to heavy metals during our billions of years of evolution, and not surprisingly we have evolved mechanisms for protection from and elimination of those metals. I agree that heavy metals have a higher than justified level of Internet Paranoia. However, it's a legitimate concern that we might be overwhelming our defenses or accumulating significant body stores of harmful metals. People who don't want to harm themselves aren't crazy. I've seen the China source bashing. It comes from the fact that we have to take the vendors word that their supplements are safe, and there is a temptation for a small vendor to buy cheap compounds from sketchy Chinese sources. China is kind of like the Wild West at the moment. I'm sure they'll eventually develop tighter regulations just like the rest of the developed world, because Chinese people don't want to be poisoned any more than anyone else. The problem is that at the moment, there are small Chinese suppliers that are cheap and potentially dangerous, and consumers have no way to tell if a supplement came from a good Chinese source or a bad one.

When I was a kid, toothpaste tubes were made of lead and I could find mercury in thermometers, light switches and thermostats. We painted our houses with lead-based paint and drank water out of lead pipes or copper pipes that were soldered with lead-based solder. Our largest source of lead poisoning was the tetraethyl lead in our gasoline; essentially the lead version of methylmercury. Our uncontrolled coal fired plants spewed mercury, along with a host of other toxic and radioactive substances. Come to think of it, they still do, to a somewhat lesser extent today, with the Republicans fighting controls all the way. Despite that recent history of heavy metal exposure, we've still managed to make it to this point. I suppose it could be argued that without that metal exposure, we'd be smarter, and as a nation we wouldn't have made some of the strategic blunders that we did, thus we'd be better off today. We'll never know. Plasma lead levels in children are lower today than they were in the past. Quite a lot lower, in fact.