Seafood is the most common way people ingest too much mercury. It's because the natural element exists in underwater volcanoes and other crevices. The mercury seeps into the sea and gets consumed by a wide variety of organisms, mostly fish, as you pointed out.

Dental fillings also contain mercury and there is some debate as to how dangerous amalgam fillings are to your health. The American Dental Association insists that the mercury is combined with other metals to make it stable and safe. However, it is partially mercury, and it is in your mouth, so a bad surgical procedure or a particularly hard bite (on say, a jawbreaker?) could wear down the filling. This is still only speculative, so the debate about mercury in dental fillings continues.
Source(s):
http://www.ada.org/public/topics/fillings.asp
http://www.ific.org/publications/qa/mercuryqa.cfm

Permalink | Report

I have to tell you, when I was in high school myself and a few friends broke into an old house in our neighborhood that had a fire at some point in the near past and no one was living in it. In it's basement we found a small old-style bottle no more than 2 or 3 inches tall, 1 inch wide, half full of mercury; at the time we had no idea that mercury was hazardous to humans and had a lot of fun pouring it out into our hand and, being the liquid it is at room temperature, was a lot of fun to roll around in your hand; it did however strip the gold plating off my high school class ring, which I've since lost long ago. I graduated h.s. in 1995.) But anyway, handling mercury had no ill effects on me.

NOW GET OFF MY LAWN!
Source(s):
myself, handling mercury 13 years ago.

Permalink | Report

Mercury-silver amalgam, dental fillings, and if you had the habit of chewing gum every day could be a cause of too much mercury in you body.
Permalink | Report

Bad fillings in teeth as at some point mercury was used instead of other filing materials.
Permalink | Report

This doesn't technically answer the question but I thought you might be interested to know, in case you didn't already, that some drug products, such as certain vaccines, contain a preservative that contains mercury called "thimerosal." Usually, only trace amounts are used in products, but it is good to be aware of nonetheless. Certain autism awareness groups and many parents of autistic children believe there may be a link between the thimerosal in childhood vaccines and autism. The FDA maintains that thimerosal is safe in trace amounts and there is no evidence of a link between it's use and autism.

Although mercury from this source is in trace amounts and probably wouldn't contribute to "too much mercury in your body," some people would be of the opinion that any amount of mercury from a source that can be avoided is too much.
Source(s):
http://www.fda.gov/cber/vaccine/Thimerosal.htm

Permalink | Report