An “essential mineral” is a chemical element that is required by organisms for survival or at least for health. The elements carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, however, are excluded from the list because they are so omnipresent that they were never recognized as minerals.
The well-established essential minerals are:
In addition, the following elements are suspected to be essential minerals:
Circumstantial evidence suggests that the following elements might also be essential, despite the reputation many of them have for being merely toxic 1:
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