Food & Drink / Compounds / Methylmercury chloride

Methylmercury chloride in food: ingestion safety

Moderate risk

(People-specific data is limited; this page draws from human adult context.) Safety profile for Methylmercury chloride relevant to people.

What is methylmercury chloride?

The IUPAC name is Chloromethylmercury.

Also known as: Chloromethylmercury, Methylmercuric chloride, chloro(methyl)mercury, Mercury methyl chloride.

IUPAC name
Chloromethylmercury
CAS number
115-09-3
Molecular formula
CH3HgCl
Molecular weight
251.09 g/mol
SMILES
C[Hg]Cl
PubChem CID
409301

Risk for people

Moderate risk

Regulatory consensus

2 regulatory and scientific bodies have classified Methylmercury chloride. The classifications differ — that's the data.

AgencyYearClassificationNotes
EPA——
IARC——

Regulators apply different standards of evidence — animal-data weighting, exposure-pattern assumptions, epidemiological power thresholds — which is why two scientific bodies can review the same data and reach different conclusions. The disagreement is the data.

Where you encounter methylmercury chloride

  • laboratory settings
  • research institutions
  • aquatic food chains
  • fish tissue

Safer alternatives

Lower-risk approaches that achieve a similar outcome to Methylmercury chloride:

  • Thimerosal-free vaccine preservatives (2-phenoxyethanol)
    Trade-offs: Narrower antimicrobial spectrum. Single-dose vials eliminate need for preservative.
    Relative cost: 1.2× (single-dose vials 3-5×)

Frequently asked questions

What products contain methylmercury chloride?

Methylmercury chloride appears in: laboratory settings; research institutions; aquatic food chains.

See Methylmercury chloride in the food app

Look up products containing methylmercury chloride, compare to alternatives, and explore the full data record.

Open in food View raw API data

Sources (1)
  1. ATSDR Toxicological Profile — CAS 115-09-3 — reference

Reference data, not professional advice. Aggregates publicly available regulatory and scientific data; not a substitute for veterinary, medical, legal, or regulatory advice. Why we built ALETHEIA →