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Copper sulphate's long-term effect on human brain

My name is Walt and I've been using copper sulphate ⇦ this on eBay or Amazon [affil links] to treat wells in Africa. The key to killing off bacteria, E. coli, etc. is having a copper that is "self-dispersing" and positively charged. The positively charged ions repel each other and create a self-dispersing effect once placed in the water. This carrier agent apparently is helpful because, unlike chlorine or silver, copper is highly potent to disrupt the "nasties" without having a adverse effect on humans.....at very low doses of about .6 ppm. However, I had heard concern from certain researchers that there is evidence that copper sulphate can "build up" in certain species of fish over time....with devastating results. Finally, my question: What is the CAUSE of build up in the fish? Would this same build up happen in the human brain over time? Thanks in advance!

Walt Moore
Student - Holland, Michigan, USA
August 6, 2008

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August 7, 2008

You do not say what level of a student that you are.
Toxicity is in the dose, i.e., what is the amount ingested over what period of time. If it is a chronic exposure, then is it retained by the body and where is it retained.
Fish are not humans, so you can not make assumptions about what applies to fish applying to humans until research shows that it does. A classic was trichloroethylene, a cleaning solvent was banned because it harmed lab mice. Turns out that for this compound the metabolism of humans was different than lab mice. It is still harmful to the human body, but the dose is massively higher than for a lab mouse.
I know that there has been research done on the toxicity of copper on more than one kind of fish, and I will guess that somewhere there has been some low level research on the effect on humans. Much of that data will be anecdotal as we can not use humans as test specimens.

James Watts
- Navarre, Florida