Description

The first indication of the extreme toxicity of dimethylmercury (DMM) was documented in 1863 when two laboratory assistants died of DMM poisoning while synthesizing DMM in the laboratory of Frankland and Duppa. There are numerous reports of people dying from alkyl mercury compounds including a chemist who was preparing several thousand grams ofDMMin his laboratory in 1974. The extreme toxicity was revisited in 1997, when Karen Wetterhahn, an internationally renowned researcher of the carcinogenic effects of heavy metals on DNA repair proteins, died within a few months after a single exposure of less than a milliliter of DMM on her latex-covered hand. DMM is extremely toxic and lethal at a dose of approximately 400 mg of mercury (equivalent to a few drops) or about 5mgkg-1 of body weight or as little as 0.1 ml