How much does MethyMercury (MeHg) pollution cost in EuroZone? Ten billion euros!

MeHg pollution attacks the nervous system, whether in adults or children, although children, fetuses and infants are more vulnerable. It damages the nervous system. It can stop your nerves from working well; can affect the workings of your memory such that you can no longer keep attention when needed; it can affect how your limbs work, and furthermore, it can affect how your eyes calculates space such that you could mistakenly fall down from a story building without realizing it. In health and human terms, the cost is enormous.

A team of researchers wanted to find out the effect of MeHg poisoning in 17 European countries by collecting hair samples from mothers and their children. They found that 1.8 million children are born exposed to toxic levels of MeHg, and of these, about 13% (i.e 232,000) are exposed to hazardous levels. By country analyses showed that children born in Portugal and Spain were most exposed, while Hungarian children were the least.

A member of the research team, Prof. Philippe Grandjean, explained that converting the effects of MeHg on developing brains into IQ points would mean that controlling MeHg pollution equates to 700,000 IQ points per year that would be salvaged; translated into monetary benefits, these is equal to between 8 billion to 9 billion euros per year for the whole of the European Union . Controlling exposure levels in European countries is certainly worth the effort.
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