Estimating Exposure to Methylmercury: Effects of Uncertainties

Uncertainties in exposures can lead to biased estimates of slopes and thresholds in the exposure-response relationships that are developed from regression analysis. This paper reviews published exposure and epidemiological studies of methylmercury (MeHg) from the perspective of the accuracy and precision of the estimates used to represent the actual doses received. Sources of such uncertainties, collectively referred to as “exposure errors”, include instrumental and analytical errors, sampling and survey uncertainties, and individual variability in the relationships between the exposure metrics and the actual doses to target organs. Because the relationship between maternal intake and the consequent dose to the fetal brain varies among individuals, epidemiological studies of the effects of prenatal exposure must necessarily be accompanied by larger exposure uncertainties than comparable studies of effects on the mothers. The increased exposure errors typically result in attenuated slopes of the dose-response functions and under-estimates of thresholds, so that part of the apparent increased sensitivity of the fetus that has been developed from epidemiological studies may in fact be due to their inherently less certain exposures. Sources and magnitudes of exposure error found in the literature are discussed and their statistical ramifications are explored with Monte Carlo simulations. The paper also finds that, after adjusting for exposure error, the relationship between dietary intake and blood concentration is consistent with an average half-life shorter than has typically been used and that using population averages yields a consistent but sub-linear relationship between dietary intake of Hg and hair concentration. Investigators are urged to obtain (and present) data on more than one exposure metric, so that their relative uncertainties may be assessed independently.     

Residential firewood use in the United States

An empirical relation between residential firewood use and population density was developed from survey data for 64 counties in New England and was corroborated by data from other states. The results indicate that usage is concentrated in urbanized areas of the Northeast and north central states and that about 9.0 to 11.0 percent of U.S. space heating input is from firewood. No constraints due to the supply of wood were apparent in 1978-1979. These findings have implications for effects on air quality.     

Facilitation of spinal NMDA receptor currents by spillover of synaptically released glycine

In the mammalian CNS, N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors serve prominent roles in many physiological and pathophysiological processes including pain transmission. For full activation, NMDA receptors require the binding of glycine. It is not known whether the brain uses changes in extracellular glycine to modulate synaptic NMDA responses. Here, we show that synaptically released glycine facilitates NMDA receptor currents in the superficial dorsal horn, an area critically involved in pain processing. During high presynaptic activity, glycine released from inhibitory interneurons escapes the synaptic cleft and reaches nearby NMDA receptors by so-called spillover. In vivo, this process may contribute to the development of inflammatory hyperalgesia.     

An assessment of adult risks of paresthesia due to mercury from coal combustion

This paper presents a probabilistic assessment of the risks of transient adult paresthesia (tingling of the extremities) resulting from ingestion of methylmercury (MeHg) in fish and shellfish. Two scenarios are evaluated: the “baseline,” in which the MeHg dose results from the combined effects of eating canned tuna fish, various marine seafoods, and freshwater sportfish, and an “impact” scenario in which the Hg content of the freshwater sportfish is increased due to local deposition from a hypothetical 1000 MW_e coal-fired power plant. Measurements from the literature are used to establish the parameters of the baseline, including atmospheric rates of Hg deposition and the distributions of MeHg in fish. The Hg intake for the impact scenario is then based on linear scaling of the additional annual Hg deposition as estimated from a Gaussian plume dispersion model. Human health responses are based on a logistic fit to the frequencies of paresthesia observed during a grain poisoning incident in Iraq, 1971–2. Based on a background prevalence rate of 2.2% for adult paresthesia, the assessment predicts a 5% chance that the increase in paresthesia prevalence due to either baseline or incremental MeHg doses might approach about 1% of the background prevalence rate.