>Mercury is chemically similar to copper,  
>takes up a lot of the binding sites
>for copper,  and makes copper more toxic

Not really.
Rather, Cadmium and Zinc possess more similar chemical
properties as mercury,  copper not as much.

The main thing they share is that their normal ionic form
is divalent , and as  mercury has even higher affinity to S-- than
copper, Hg(2+)'s log Ksp is -52.00 for S--, Cu(2+)'s is -47.60, so
mercury wins in the game of binding to same enzyme dithiolanes
that copper would normally bind to.

What was found in the abstracts I discussed in detail, was that
mercury causes manyfold increase in copper intake, for example,
it was found that in liver, mercury caused at least 7-fold copper intake
increase, as mercury impairs the enzymatic feedback, and allows
one to get copper-poisoned by fooling the feedback mechanisms,
as the copper-enzymes never reach the required functionality due to
mercury impairment of the enzymes, the body lets more and more copper
into the cells in hopes it would raise their functionality, it will not
happen,
and the bell-curve top will be passed, and one reaches an area of
both mercury and copper toxicity combined, especially if one had
copper-mercury amalgams.

> Mercury toxic people do better with
>relatively LOW copper,  and often begin to experience copper toxicity at
>normal copper levels.
>

I have no evidence of that, but mercury poisoned have been proven to
have at least 7-fold levels of copper in their livers with normal copper
intake to be more accurate. Similarly, mercury toxicity in most cells
will allow them to intake too much copper, even with normal copper
intake.

>Basically,  normal levels of Cu and Mn cause types of physiological stress
>that are just fine if they are the only things causing it,  but that become
>damaging when added in with the same type of stresses that mercury causes.
>

Mn is similarly problematic as mercury, as it also allows higher than normal
copper intake to cells, ie, just like mercury, it contributes to formation
of
copper poisoning, especially in the brain, and that was also in the
abstracts
I posted during the last six, in case anyone happened to read the abstracts
I posted and the information I wrote about the copper-mercury-manganese-
zinc-molybdenum connection. Most of those excellent abstracts can be
found from the past archives,

                                                     Regards, Ray

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