Just compare the use of the mercury compound thimersol in vaccines to the long term use of mercury in hat making. Workers making felted hats got Mad Hatters Disease, severe brain damage. The Lewis Carroll character of the Mad Hatter is treated as a joke in Alice In Wonderland. The United States was the last country in the West by 40 years to tolerate the use of mercury in making hats, only stopping because the mercury was needed instead to make detonators in ammunition for World War II. Worker protection and patient protection in the United States are treated as throwaway jokes when there is money to be made.
Wikipedia: The first description of symptoms of mercury poisoning among hatters appears to have been made in St. Petersburg, Russia, in 1829. In the United States, a thorough occupational description of mercury poisoning among New Jersey hatters was published locally by Addison Freeman in 1860. Adolph Kussmaul's definitive clinical description of mercury poisoning published in 1861 contained only passing references to hatmakers, including a case originally reported in 1845 of a 15-year-old Parisian girl, the severity of whose tremors following two years of carroting [hatmaking process] prompted opium treatment. In Britain, the toxicologist Alfred Swaine Taylor reported the disease in a hatmaker in 1864.
In 1869, the French Academy of Medicine demonstrated the health hazards posed to hatmakers. Alternatives to mercury use in hatmaking became available by 1874. In the United States, a hydrochloride-based process was patented in 1888 to obviate the use of mercury, but was ignored.
In 1898, legislation was passed in France to protect hatmakers from the risks of mercury exposure. By the turn of the 20th century, mercury poisoning among British hatters had become a rarity.
In the United States, the mercury-based process continued to be adopted until as late as 1941, when it was abandoned mainly due to the wartime need for the heavy metal in the manufacture of detonators. Thus, for much of the 20th century mercury poisoning remained common in the U.S. hatmaking industries, including those located in Danbury, Connecticut (giving rise to the expression the "Danbury shakes").
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