Is there mercury in the swine flu vaccine?
The flu vaccine contains a small amount of thimerosal. That’s because the vaccine is delivered in multi-dose vials, so needles are inserted into the vial more than once to extract doses. For that reason, all flu vaccine bottles (seasonal and swine flu) contain small amounts of thimerosal as a preservative. Thimerosal is a mercury-based preservative, but it’s made of the ethylmercury, not methylmercury, which can accumulate in the body and has been linked to neurological damage. Studies have shown that ethylmercury from vaccines disappears rapidly from the blood. The levels of ethylmercury in vaccines are minute and have not been shown to cause harm, says the Public Health Agency of Canada. It’s estimated that there is four times as much mercury in a can of tuna fish than in the thimerosal in the H1N1 flu vaccine.
