mercury in vaccines

[Salesmonkey]

I need my math checked, please. I'm trying to express the amount of mercury in vaccines in terms of cans of tuna fish.

The seasonal flu vaccine has 25 micrograms (mcg) of mercury in its thimerosol preservative. Consumer Reports says that canned tuna contains from 0.12 to 0.31 parts per million mercury. A standard tin of tuna is 142 grams.

Given these, I calculate that your mercury exposure from getting the flu shot is roughly equivalent to eating a can and a half of tuna fish (assuming the lowest fish mercury level).

Am I correct in my calculations? Thanks!

[HYHYBT]

Only worth considering because the apparent intended audience will grasp at any straw: the possible difference between injecting something, where 100% of it is in your body, and eating it, where some might pass through unabsorbed.

[s_stabeler]

you're about right, though. ( it's slightly less, actually)

[TheHuckster]

Meh, all the anti-vaxxers will say to that is, "OMG! We've got to declare a war on tuna!"

[Daskinor]

about right, Normal tuna is 12-15, Solid White is around 30.

Its a situation where your mileage will vary.

[DGoddess]

Meh, all the anti-vaxxers will say to that is, "OMG! We've got to declare a war on tuna!"

We'll probably see online petitions being passed around on FB like notes in a classroom.

I"m really not sure if this is enough to get ones panties in a wad over but as we all know, it doesn't take much for some folks out there.

[Greenday]

As HYHYBT, there's a difference in the method of intake. Different ways of entering the system will affect different organs and will absorb at different rates. It's why some people smoke drugs while other people snort the exact same ones and others still yet inject them.

It's such an insanely small amount you get from either fish or vaccines it's not even worth mentioning. Also I found an article using mcg for microgram which threw me off since u is the letter for micro. But not I'm just nitpicking.

[BlaqueKatt]

I need my math checked, please. I'm trying to express the amount of mercury in vaccines in terms of cans of tuna fish.

Am I correct in my calculations? Thanks!

calculations don't matter it's TWO DIFFERENT TYPES!
Methylmercury-found in tuna bioaccumulates
Ethymercury-metabolite of thimerisol and has a half life of under 14 days in an infant.

comparing the two is like comparing sodium chloride and potassium chloride because their both chloride salts, or methanol and vodka*(one will kill you).

And the 25 micrograms is for the entire multi dose vial(usually 10 ml), you get a fraction of it. Unfortunately antivaxxers lie(the 25 micrograms per 0.5ml injection figure is from mercola-known quack)

*this is actually closer because one is methyl alcohol and one is ethyl alcohol.

[wolfie]

Ethymercury-metabolite of thimerisol and has a half life of under 14 days in an infant.

Predicting how the anti-vaxxers would react to that.

Half-life of under 14 days? "Half-life" is a property of radioactive materials, and the shorter it is, the more strongly radioactive something is. OMG! Vaccines are highly radioactive! Eleventy!

Of course, in this case, "half-life" refers to the BIOLOGICAL half-life, a property where the rate of elimination from the body is proportional to the concentration (as opposed to a constant limited by some enzyme pathway, as in the case of ethanol).

What gets REALLY interesting is calculating radiation exposure in cases where the biological half-life is within an order of magnitude to the radioactive half-life (doesn't apply here, since mercury is not radioactive), since some of the stuff would be getting eliminated before it has a chance to decay.

[s_stabeler]

actually, almost everything bioaccumulates in some fashion or another- what Bioaccumulation means is that you are ingesting more than you get rid of. Ethylmercury simply gets out a lot quicker. Methylmercury has a half-life of 50 days.

the point, though, is that getting vaccinated is no more dangerous than eating a tin of tuna.

[Salesmonkey]

Methylmercury-found in tuna bioaccumulates
Ethymercury-metabolite of thimerisol and has a half life of under 14 days in an infant.

Since the purpose of this exercise was to create a gross oversimplification that could be easily used in conversation, I didn't want to bring up the topic of how ethyl mercury is much safer than methyl.

I got the 25 mcg dose stat from the cdc, http://www.cdc.gov/flu/protect/vaccine/vaccines.htm

and I think I read it correctly. Again, I could very easily be wrong, that was my whole purpose of asking for help in this analysis. Thank you everybody for your discussion and input.