Aug 6, 2025
"After more than 20 years of delay, I’m proud to finally deliver on a long-overdue promise: protecting our most vulnerable from unnecessary mercury exposure." - Secretary Kennedy
On Substack: https://ivim.substack.com/p/us-bans-mercury-in-vaccines-what
“The amount of ethyl mercury in the flu shot is 25,000 times EPA’s safety level for drinking water.”
“Why were we injecting this toxin into babies and pregnant women?”
“The link between thimerosal and neurological injuries in American children, including autism, is biologically plausible.”
“I’ve been trying to get mercury out of fish for 40 years and nobody called me anti-fish.”
“This decision sends a clear message: the days of ignoring the science are over. The days of putting profits ahead of people are over.”
Robert F. Kennedy Jr., as HHS Secretary in this announcement, declared the official ban on thimerosal in all U.S. vaccines, including flu shots. He emphasized that:
Thimerosal (ethyl mercury) is a potent neurotoxin, mutagen, and reproductive toxicant.
It remained in flu vaccines for decades despite lacking safety studies and despite evidence of harm.
Regulatory agencies (FDA, CDC) knew of risks but suppressed studies and silenced discussion.
Studies show thimerosal crosses the blood-brain barrier, accumulates for decades, and is linked to miscarriage, autism spectrum disorders, and neurological injury.
Mercury in vaccines was treated as hazardous waste when disposed of—yet still injected into babies and pregnant women.
The ban fulfills a decades-old promise and brings U.S. policy in line with other developed nations.
He concluded by calling for global action, urging WHO and GAVI to stop administering mercury-containing vaccines to millions of children worldwide.
Hi, I’m Robert F. Kennedy Jr., your HHS Secretary.
I’m happy to report that last week we closed the final chapter in the long history of thimerosal in the United States.
Thimerosal, of course, is a mercury-based vaccine preservative. Its main component, ethyl mercury, is a known and very potent neurotoxin. Until we withdrew the recommendation last week, flu shots containing thimerosal, astonishingly, were still being administered to millions of Americans, including pregnant women and children.
Now, I’ve taken a lot of flack from the vaccine industry and from its allies in the press about my decision to ban it. So, I want to talk a little bit about my reasons.
In early 2001, the Director of the FDA Office of Vaccine Research and Review, the late William Egan, admitted under oath before Congress that thimerosal’s safety had never been studied in human beings. Further, CDC has no existing guidelines for safe exposures to ethyl mercury. It’s therefore inexcusable that these agencies allowed neurotoxic mercury to be injected into Americans for so long.
A quick search of the National Library of Medicine’s PubMed and PubChem websites nets thousands of studies on search terms such as “mercury neurotoxicity,” “mercury and development,” and “mercury and the brain.” Hundreds of them identify thimerosal as a potent neurotoxin, a carcinogen, a mutagen, and an endocrine disruptor.
But let’s put all that peer-reviewed science aside and just look at what the government itself and the vaccine industry say about thimerosal.
Thimerosal’s own label advises against its use during pregnancy, pointing out that thimerosal has never been shown to be safe and that it causes mutations in mammals.
Thimerosal’s material safety data sheet acknowledges that thimerosal is “toxic,” that it has “Nervous System and Reproductive Effects,” that it’s “mutagenic in mammalian cells,” that exposure to mercury in thimerosal “in utero and in children could cause mild to severe mental retardation and mild to severe motor coordination impairment.”
The MSDS also lists a grim inventory of dozens of other devastating injuries from thimerosal exposure.
In 2001, the National Institute for Environmental Health Sciences warned that thimerosal is “toxic by ingestion and inhalation.” The California EPA recognizes thimerosal as a reproductive toxicant in the clearest possible language:
“Thimerosal,” it says, “dissociates in the body to ethyl mercury. The evidence for its reproductive toxicity includes severe mental retardation or malformations in human offspring who were poisoned when their mothers were exposed to ethyl mercury or received thimerosal vaccines while pregnant. Studies in animals demonstrate that developmental toxicity after exposure to either ethyl mercury or thimerosal.”
The U.S. EPA also identifies mercury and mercury compounds as causing reproductive toxicity. The amount of ethyl mercury in the flu shot that CDC just banned under my order is 25,000 times EPA’s safety level for drinking water.
Federal and state laws provide that whenever expired thimerosal vaccines are disposed of, they constitute hazardous waste. They have to be disposed of in special landfills.
I have to ask again: why were we injecting this toxin into babies and pregnant women?
A year 2000 study by the National Research Council found that prenatal and infant mercury exposures cause multiple impacts to basic brain development by disrupting the division and the migration of neuronal cells.
According to the National Toxicity Program:
“Ethyl mercury is a neurotoxin. Infants may be more susceptible than adults. Ethyl mercury exposure from vaccines probably caused neurotoxic responses in some children.”
A 2005 NIH study, commissioned by FDA’s Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research and performed by the National Toxicity Program, found that ethyl mercury in thimerosal crosses the blood-brain barrier, lodges in the brain, and metabolizes into the most toxic form of mercury at double the rate of the heavily regulated methylmercury in fish.
A subsequent study found that this highly toxic mercury remains in the brain for over 27 years.
A 2017 study by CDC links miscarriage to flu vaccines and found that the odds of having a miscarriage within 28 days were 7.7 times greater than in women who did not receive a flu shot during pregnancy. Another study published that same year in the Journal of the American Medical Association found an elevated risk of autism spectrum disorders in children whose mothers had received a first trimester flu shot.
Instead of immediately withdrawing thimerosal from flu shots to protect women and their babies, CDC issued a gag order instructing its personnel not to discuss that study.
On October 1, 2001, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences issued a report concluding that the link between thimerosal and the rise of neurological injuries in American children, including autism, is “biologically plausible.” And they recommended the termination of all thimerosal-preserved vaccines.
Regulators should never have allowed mercury in any vaccines, especially those given to children. They had the science, but they chose to ignore it.
For 20 years, I’ve been battling to get mercury out of vaccines. Instead of following the science, CDC and its allies in the industry and the pharma-funded media have marginalized, vilified, and censored parents, doctors, and scientists who questioned the wisdom of using mercury in vaccines, by calling them with the pejorative “anti-vaxxer.”
I’ve been trying to get mercury out of fish for 40 years, and nobody called me “anti-fish.” That’s the pattern we’ve seen for too long: companies protect profits by suppressing the science, and regulators lie to the public and look the other way.
But this pattern ends now under President Trump’s new HHS.
I’m happy to announce that my newly appointed CDC Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices voted in June to recommend a full ban on mercury-containing preservatives in all vaccines, including flu shots. I formally approved that recommendation last week.
The decision breaks decades of paralysis, and it fulfills the 1999 promise by the National Academy of Sciences. It finally aligns U.S. vaccine policy with that of developed countries that removed mercury additives decades ago.
Let me be clear: flu vaccines will remain available. Manufacturers have confirmed that they can shift from mercury-preserved multi-dose vials to single-dose applications. This change ensures the uninterrupted supply for both the Vaccines for Children program and adult vaccination efforts.
Now that the U.S. has removed mercury from all vaccines, we urge global health authorities to follow suit—for the protection of children around the world. We urge the World Health Organization and GAVI to stop their programs of injecting mercury into more than 100 million Black and brown babies in developing countries annually.
This moment marks a major step toward restoring public trust in the safety of our medicines.
This decision sends a clear message: the days of ignoring the science are over. The days of putting profits ahead of people are over.
We are remaking FDA and CDC under President Trump’s leadership—your FDA and your CDC—into the vigilant public watchdogs that they were always meant to be.
Thank you.
