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So New Tim Burton Film I'm not sure if everyone's aware, but he's coming out with his very own Alice in Wonderland which personally I'm very excited about.
In the mist of mentioning it while I was writing a blog about Tim Burton, one of my friends mentioned that they werent sure about it because of the charactor desing for the mad hatter which Burton has given REd hair instead of white hair.
NOw in case your not familiar with the mad hatter he goes mad from the felt on his hat which at the time was processed with Mercury, geting mercury poisoning and therefor making him go mad.
My friend then mentioned this: he went mad and his hair went white because of the poisoning so the Mad Hatter must have white hair she stated.
I know she was just being bias to a charactor trait she was so familiar with and loved (which I always thought was a disney trait - as appose to what the charactor would actually look like - which really it's up for interpretation since it's creation is simply written in a book) But I got "scientific" and stated that Mercury poisoning although it would make you go 'crazy', would not give you white hair. My reasoning is that you would be dead long before you could get white hair from mercury poisoning, and that the mad hatter probably had white hair from the stress of going mad, which makes more sence to me. I guess in a sence it doesn't really matter how he gets white hair as long as he has white hair because it was something she was so familiar with and loved.

In conclusion, I would like to know if Mercury Poisoning would turn your hair white?
And if so? HOw long would that take?
I have tried googling but nothing really came up.

Anyone?


-Catz

First of all, a tim Burton Alice in Wonderland would be awesome - that's exactly the kind of movie where his dark and moody style would fit perfectly.

Second, mercury poisoning is a topic of that ought to be of interest to me, since my job is to analyze environmental and industrial samples for mercury content. The following link seemed to be a good summary of mercury poisoning symptoms, and did not mention gray or white hair specifically.

http://curezone.com/dental/mercury_symptoms.asp

(I was particularly amused by the mention of skin creams, since I have analyzed samples of skin cream at work that showed a possible mercury content of near 10%, though organic interference was also a possibility I couldn't rule out since some organic molecules absorb the same wavelength as mercury. Atomic absorption is the techniques I use to quantify mercury concentration in analyzed samples.)

Another link, describing hair color and its loss however, does mention toxins and pollutants as possible causes of graying hair, though mercury is not specifically mentioned. If mercury in the body interfered with the manufacture or deposit of pigments into the hair's keratin, then the hair would grow out gray or white.

http://www.loc.gov/rr/scitech/mysteries/grayhair.html