Mercury, fetal damage linked

WASHINGTON -- Children whose mothers ate seafood high in mercury while pregnant can suffer irreparable brain damage, researchers reported yesterday.

The report was issued the same week in which the US Environmental Protection Agency doubled its estimate of how many newborns had unsafe levels of mercury in their blood.

The study, done by an international group led by researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health, also indicated that fetuses exposed to mercury in the womb may suffer permanent damage to their heart function.

"We found that both prenatal and postnatal mercury exposure affects brain functions and that they seem to affect different targets in the brain," Philippe Grandjean, who led the study, said in a statement.

Grandjean and colleagues studied more than 1,000 mothers and children living on the Faroe Islands in Denmark. Residents there eat large amounts of fish, much of it contaminated with mercury.

The researchers measured mercury in umbilical cord blood taken from the children at birth and then in hair samples taken at ages 7 and 14.