MERCURY, A PUBLIC SERVICE
ANNOUNCEMENT | Jeanne Yu
toxic to the central and peripheral nervous systems (1),
emitted into the air, travels thousands of miles, eventually deposited back to earth.
Almost all people in the world have at least trace amounts in their tissues (2).
My back against the wall, I slide down,
drop my brain-locked head to my bent knees,
into this puddle I have become,
every unknown blamed on menopause or aging
while it gradually takes me over.
global anthropogenic emissions of mercury for 2015 are 20% higher than 2010 (3).
blood and urine mercury levels tend to increase with age (4).
This is the poem in which I will tell you, don’t try to explain to
anyone you have mercury poisoning, because your fingernails
will turn blue before they will believe you,
dance partners in the folds of your brain, Google it,
“Mercury and Alzheimer’s,” “Mercury and Parkinson’s,” “Mercury and dementia,” and
polymorphism in the MTHFR gene –
only 30% of normal function [for mercury removal] (5), and
8 to 20% of the population ... are homozygous (6).
My brain becomes a moshpit and a mercury savings account, they tell me to eat less fish.
The biggest single source is the burning of fossil fuels,
rainfall washes the mercury into the ocean (7).
Nearly all fish and shellfish contain traces of mercury,
table is sorted from fish with lowest to highest levels of mercury (8).
U.S. EPA, Center for Disease Control, American Heart Association, FDA, World Health, Woods Hole Oceanic, there must be an agency missing –
I text my family “I’m doing better with chelation, but now found an MTHFR mutation”,
my son-in-law replies,
“MTHFR, LOL. But, seriously?”
World Health Organization, 2017. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mercury-and-health
US Environmental Protection Agency, https://www.epa.gov/mercury/how-people-are-exposed-mercury, https://www.epa.gov/international-cooperation/mercury- emissions-global-context
UN Environment, 2019. Global Mercury Assessment 2018. UN Environment Programme, Chemicals and Health Branch, Geneva, Switzerland: ISBN: 978-92-807-3744-8
US Center for Disease Control and Prevention National Biomonitoring Program https://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/Mercury_FactSheet.html
https://www.ahajournals.org/doi/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.114.013311
American Heart Association, Circulation Journal. 2015 | Volume 132, Issue 1: 1
Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Oceanus Journal. December 2010.
U.S. Food and Drug Administration, https://www.fda.gov/food/metals-and-your-food/mercury-concentrations-fish-fda-monitoring-program-1990-2010
Jeanne Yu is a poet, a lifelong environmentalist, an engineer and a mom who lives every day in the hope she has for the world, in spite of and because of our humanness. She completed her MFA at Pacific University in January 2023. Yu was a semi-finalist in Rattle’s poetry contest in 2021. Her poems appear in Rattle 78, Paper Dragon and Breakwater Review. Yu volunteers for Oregon Poetry Association, Perugia Press and serves as the assistant poetry editor for Northwest Review.