With methylmercury a worldwide contaminant of seafood and freshwater fish and known to produce adverse nervous system effects, especially during brain development, researchers from the Harvard School of Public Health and institutions in Japan, Denmark and the Faroe Islands undertook an assessment of possible brain function impairment in adolescent children due to prenatal exposure to mercury when the mothers' diet was high in seafood. The authors found that high levels of mercury passed from mother to child in utero produced irreversible impairment to specific brain functions in the children. The study was carried out in the Faroe Islands and appears in the February issue of The Journal of Pediatrics.
Prenatal Exposure to Mercury From a Maternal Diet High in Seafood Can Irreversibly Impair Certain Brain Functions in Children, press release of Friday, February 06, 2004, Harvard School of Public Health
