Toxicity of chelated mercury.

The oral and iv acute toxicities of several mercury chelates were determined in mice in a search for relationships bearing on the effectiveness of various chelating agents in therapy. It was found that the toxicity was independent of the stability constant for the mercury chelate when the toxicity was expressed on a molar basis. For the mercury chelates of sulfhydryl containing chelating agents, the oral toxicity was unexpectedly low, presumably due to the poor absortion of these materials from the G.I. tract. The results suggest that the toxicities of mercury complexes are independent of the stability constant of the complex over the range of stability constant from 10(23) on down, provided chelation does not drastically alter the distribution of the complex in the body.