Summary
The EPA IRIS chemical assessment summary for mercuric chloride covers the inorganic mercury salt and provides a quantitative oral reference dose anchored on autoimmune kidney effects in animals. The IRIS RfD was last updated 1995-05-01 and remains the operative EPA value for inorganic mercury. The methylmercury IRIS assessment is a separate document covering the more dietary-relevant species.
Provenance notes
The filename EPA_IRIS_ElementalMercury_ToxReview.pdf is misleading: the document content addresses mercuric chloride (HgCl2, an inorganic mercury salt), not elemental mercury (Hg⁰). Elemental mercury is the species relevant to inhalation exposure from dental amalgam and occupational settings; mercuric chloride is the species addressed in this IRIS assessment. Cite key uses the actual chemical species.
Wiki pages updated on ingest
Update history
The five most recent substantive edits to this page, classified major (evidence or structure moved), correction (a published value or statement was wrong and has been fixed), or minor (narrative rewritten without changing the underlying evidence). Each description is derived from what the edit did to this page; the linked commit is the authoritative record, routine regeneration passes are excluded, and the full version history lives in git. When DOI minting comes online (see schema docs), each entry below will also link to a version-pinned DataCite DOI.
| Commit | Date | Change | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| a8052bb | 2026-08-09 | major | 4 sections added; narrative text revised |