Raena Morgan: Hello, I’m visiting with Dr. Laszlo Meszaros. Dr. Meszaros, what are the metals of concern and how do they affect our health? Big question? Dr. Laszlo Meszaros: Pretty big question, pretty complicated ring of questions it would bring up. Everybody knows probably that cadmium; mercury and lead what we really have to be concerned about. Even you can narrow it down and I would say that nowadays lead contamination, toxicity is not really an issue since all over the world, almost all over the world, the paints, lead based, and the paints are banned. So you don’t really specific areas you can have some concern about it, but the general population is not really exposed to lead anymore. Raena Morgan: Well, that’s good. Dr. Laszlo Meszaros: But, unfortunately, it’s very much not true for cadmium and very much not true for mercury. Both of them I would say, maybe even more dangerous than lead was, let’s said, 20 years ago. More than 80 sources of mercury you have, an average person will be exposed to on a daily basis. Raena Morgan: Will be exposed to how much? Dr. Laszlo Meszaros: More than 80 different sources. Raena Morgan: Okay. Dr. Laszlo Meszaros: For cadmium, it’s more than 60 different sources. I mean, there’s no really time to go through all of them, but there are some very important ones. Raena Morgan: Alright. Dr. Laszlo Meszaros: For instance, in the case of cadmium, it turns out that we are getting cadmium into the air because of the breaking system of the cars. Once you break, the break pad or I don’t know how they call it. Heats up and some cadmium evaporate. In a large city, it could cause significant concern. The other major source for cadmium, for instance is soil itself. Which is not a big problem because we don’t eat soil, right? But— Raena Morgan: But. Dr. Laszlo Meszaros: But, it turns out that this mineral water became so popular, we have many, many water sources which are cadmium contaminated. I don’t know about the FDA in the United States, but for instance in Europe, they don’t really check for it. But in mineral waters, you can have significant contamination. Or with mercury, a few years back, the main concern was certain type of preservatives, antiseptics, chemicals, what was used by even the food industry, even the cosmetic industry. Now, as I know, these are banned now, but I know I’m not going to mention a name but I still know a large, one of the largest toothpaste company who still puts mercury compound in their toothpaste. Or amalgam fillings; it’s a constant source of mercury. And the third largest is most likely nowadays offices where you have a lot of computers. The problem with this is we accumulate these toxins. Raena Morgan: Alright. Dr. Laszlo Meszaros: Once you get exposed to mercury, in your brain, the half life of that contamination is 18 years. So basically, if you’re exposed once, basically it stays in your brain forever. So it goes, can cause all kinds of neurological problems. We also know that it cause a kind of immune deficiency syndrome. I’m talking about mercury now. Very recently, the literature and science starts discovering that they probably both mercury and cadmium have something to do with cancer, many different types of cancer development. Raena Morgan: Well, okay, thank you very much Dr. Meszaros. Dr. Laszlo Meszaros: You’re welcome.