Friday April 23 2005

By Douglas Fischer
Staff Writer

A mercury laced preservative once widely added to pediatric vaccines exposes infants brains to twice
the neurotoxins as previously suspected,
offering evidence health guidelines may underestimate the risk newborns face,
researchers say in a report published Thursday.

The additive, thimersal, has been used in vaccines since the 1930s and is almost 50 percent mercury by weight.
Since 2001, manafactures gradually have phased it from almost all domestic pediatric vaccines,
though it remains in use overseas in cheaper " multidose " vaccines.

The study , publised in Environmental Health Perspectives, a peer review publication of the National Institutes of Health ,
also chides health officials for abandoning an earlier recommendation that the preservative be completely phased out and further studies conducted.

And it fuels the debate concerning the Federal Governments Aggresive Vaccination Plan that subjects infants
to a battery of shots- some which contain aluminum and other potentially harmfull compounds- in their first
weeks of life.

"We're talking about a lowlevel delievery of a toxin given to a baby on the first day of its life,
" said mercury expert Bob Haley, chairman of the chemistry department at the University of Kentucky but
not involved in the study.

" what is needed is a total study of the sensibility of the vaccine program.
Why would you want to vaccinate a baby on the first day of it's life ?

The report is one of the first to look beyond mercury blood levels resulting from the vaccines.
Instead it examines both the amount and type of mercury reaching the brain.
It suggests health officals examined the wrong compound and failed to look far enough when assessing the danger of mercury in thimerosal.

This is largly a past concern for the United States, given the
predominance today of thimersol- free vaccines. Both the studys lead author and the Center For Disease Control and Prevention on Wednesday
urged parents to have their children vaccinated.

" Thats the first message", said Thomas Burbacher, lead author and associate professor in the Department Of Environmental and
Occpational Health Sciences at the University Of Washington's School of Public Health.

" The bottom line is that trying to assess the effects of a compound with very little or no data is not a good thing to do.
..... Unfortunately, we started doing studies on this compound way to late. Basic information like this should've been been available decades ago. "

However, the problem is very much alive for developing nations, where the additive is common.
The World Health Organization has expressed interest in Burbacher's research.

The problem, Burbacher said, is the regulators trying to assess thimersal harm used as a benchmark methylmercury a widely studied compound
rather then the little- known ethylmercury in thimerosal.

Both compounds cross the blood- brain barrier. But methylmercury breaks down slowly, whereas ethlmercury dissapates fairly rapidly,
suggesting to regulators that a standard based methlmercury would adequately protect infants....