She had very high levels of mercury in her blood, and all attempts at chelation therapy to remove it were ineffective. That’s surely because it had spread throughout her body by the time the problem was recognized, but frankly no one can be sure if there were any measures that could have been effective enough after the initial exposure.
Is this accurate? I read the original Wetterhahn report (it's the first search result on Google) and chelation did appear to reduce whole blood mercury, but didn't do anything for the CNS exposure.
That would be important because it suggests immediate Succimer treatment could avert fatal CNS exposure (it takes hours/days for the blood/brain transfer to occur, apparently).
Obviously, not an expert.
I think the article meant "ineffective" as in "it didn't save her life", not "it didn't do anything".
Here’s an interesting article suggesting that selenium and acetylcysteine may be superior to succimer:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24734306.2020.1...
There are also some studies suggesting that the amount of excess mercury in fish compared to selenium may be more relevant than the absolute mercury concentration in causing potential toxicity.