Abstract

Teresa Lech and Halina Goszcz

Elemental mercury, when injected, as opposed to inhaled, caused few of the effects typical of mercurialism; however, pleuritic chest pain was frequent, whereas renal and central nervous system symptoms were less common. In this work, five cases of intentional poisoning are presented: subjects (17–29 years) had injected themselves intravenously with a single dose of mercury in suicide attempts (one subject was a drug addict). In all cases the concentration of mercury (by cold vapor atomic absorption spectrometry) in blood, urine and hair samples was high, even a relatively long time after the injection, e.g.: case 5 (2.5 years after the incident) – blood: 27.7, urine: 74.0 µg/L, and hair: 0.09 µg/g; case 2 (5.5 years) – blood: 22.8, urine: 543 µg/L, and hair: 0.50 µg/g; case 1 (7 and 9 years) – blood: 79.5 and 94 µg/L, urine: 844 and 720 µg/L, and hair: 0.39 and 0.33 µg/g, respectively, and exceeded reference levels (blood – up to 10–15 µg/L, urine – 20 µg/L, hair – 0.20 µg/g) by several to 30 (blood), 50 (urine) or 7 (hair) times. Only in case 5 did concentrations drop to reference levels, but only after 10 years. The results revealed that the long-term presence of this metal was considerable.