As the debate rages between health officials and vaccine critics about possible links to autism, mercury seems to be a specific bone of contention. It has long been present in the form of thimerisol, a preservative that inhibits bacterial contamination. Under government pressure, amounts have been reduced by the pharmaceutical industry to trace levels or eliminated, except in commonly recommended flu vaccines, some of which contain the food emulsifier polysorbate 80, which disrupts the blood-brain barrier and helps create an extremely effective delivery system for escorting neurotoxic ethylmercury and other heavy metals straight to the brain. The U.S. National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences reports that ethylmercury, in particular, gets metabolized into even more toxic inorganic mercury and remains in the brain for years.

This article appears in the January 2018 issue of Natural Awakenings.