We all live with gold – it’s literally in our bodies.
While humans are composed of oxygen, carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, calcium, phosphorous and 19 other ‘essential’ elements, we also contain traces of many more, including gold and silver. In Nature's Building Blocks: An A-Z Guide to the Element, award-winning science writer John Emsley says the weight of gold in the average person is about 7 milligrams. It doesn’t appear that it has much purpose. It gets absorbed into our systems via the air that we breathe and the things we eat and drink. Neither is it a recipe for unexpected wealth. Excluding medical and dental gold, quantities are so miniscule that your personal body stash is worth about $0.36.
