Have you ever felt just a little “mentally slow” some days? There might be a simple but frightening answer…

Science is beginning to uncover a hidden link between the common household chemical Mercury and our slowly deteriorating memory.

Mercury is literally surrounding us every single day.  It is in our computers, our lightbulbs, even our children’s toys!

The problem comes when this chemical leaches into our water supply from waste runoff and aquifer contamination.

If left undisturbed Mercury is relatively harmless.  However, Mercury in liquid form gives off an invisible, odorless, toxic vapor…

And it’s not much safer when it makes it way into our drinking water.  Mercury usually enters the Aquifer From Landfills and Croplands in a process called “Aquifer pollutant Migration”…

Yes, It’s as scary as it sounds…

Major sources of mercury in drinking water come from erosion of natural deposits, discharge from refineries and factories, runoff from landfills, and one of the most overlooked sources is runoff from agricultural croplands.

Like we've mentioned, it is used in hundreds of household items including dry-cell batteries, fluorescent light bulbs, switches, and sensors.  A huge percentage of the things we buy these days have trace amounts of Mercury in them.

Then what do we do… We throw it all away!  Right into the dump.  Then it takes just a few short decades for the mercury to leach down through the water table and into the aquifer that supplies YOUR family’s drinking water!

The worst part of this toxin being in our water? Mercury toxicity at high levels causes neurological damage!

Now that you know HOW mercury is leaching into your water supply, lets take a closer look at some of the sinister health effects that mercury exposure has been linked to.

High level Mercury exposure has shown the following immediate effects…

• Neurological damage including confusion
• Hand tremors and chills
• Chest tightness
• Bronchitis
• Pneumonia
• Abdominal pain
• Nausea and vomiting
• Loss of appetite
• Bleeding gums
• Leg pains and a burning sensation in feet
• Lung and kidney damage
• …and skin rashes

Because mercury is so common it can silently “slip into” your water supply.

Yes, waste and runoff from landfills and other industrial polluters is responsible for much of the mercury pollution in our environment.

However, there are many other ways that Mercury can “slip in” undetected to your water supply.  Rain and snow can carry mercury from the air into surface water supplies like lakes, rivers, and reservoirs.

Plus, improperly disposed household products containing mercury easily seep through the soil and into private wells and even large municipal water supplies!

And of course, past applications of mercury based pesticides on agricultural lands continue to haunt us as these unregulated chemicals slowly make their way into our aquifers.

All this talk about it in your water is probably making you wonder about the long-term health effects. In recent animal studies, small amounts of inorganic Mercury have been shown to pass from the mother to the fetus.

The same study also found that high amounts of mercury can cause kidney damage, tumors, changes in immune system.  However, scientists are unsure if Mercury can cause these same effects in humans.

Mercury in the water we drink poses such a serious health concern because organic mercury is easily absorbed in the blood through digestive tract – at high levels it can cause irreversible kidney and nervous system damage.

It is important to note that children are most at risk from Mercury exposure, even in small doses.  This is because their nervous system is not fully developed and mercury has been found to greatly interfere with this early stage of brain development.

It’s time we face the truth… and I think we are all a little guilty of this one. Our addiction to “stuff” and our inability to properly dispose of it when it no longer suits our needs has unleashed a hidden killer into our drinking water.

But, even if we all gave up throwing away our “stuff” tomorrow, it still would not be enough to stop the environmental catastrophe that is already here! There are just too many sources of mercury contamination out there for us to try and stop each and every one of them.