A couple of weeks ago I took a pair of scissors and clipped a thatch of hair from the back of my head. I did not do this lightly — much like petroleum, my hair is an increasingly scarce resource, and I’m doing my best to conserve it. But I was taking part in a Sierra Club-sponsored test for mercury contamination in people, and levels of the toxic metal can be detected through the hair. So I taped the small sample I could spare inside an envelope and sent it off to the University of Georgia, which was doing the actual testing. And then I pretty much forgot about it.
So I was more than a bit surprised when an express letter arrived at my home from the University of Georgia a few days later, with a message from Lisa Liguori, the scientist who runs the testing lab there. It turned out that my mercury levels were more than twice the government-recommended safety limit. I wasn’t exactly a walking thermometer, but I had a surprising amount of the stuff in my blood and body.
