How much gold is in the human body?

There’s Gold in You—But Not as Much as You Might Think

It sounds like something out of a myth or a poetic metaphor: humans made of gold. But believe it or not, there’s a literal grain of truth to it. Every human body contains a tiny, almost unimaginable amount of gold—about 0.2 milligrams in a 70-kilogram adult.

This fascinating detail comes from The Elements Third Edition by John Emsley, a respected reference in chemistry published by Oxford’s Clarendon Press in 1998. While 0.2 milligrams might sound negligible—and it is—it’s still enough to spark curiosity. To put it in perspective, that’s roughly one-fifth of a milligram, or about the weight of a small grain of sand. You’d need the combined gold from over 40,000 people to make just one gram.

But what’s the gold doing in there? It’s not sitting in veins like treasure, of course. The human body uses trace elements for various biological functions, and while gold has no known physiological role, it’s believed to be present due to environmental exposure—through food, water, or even air—and possibly lingering in trace amounts in the blood or joints.

Interestingly, gold isn’t just passively present. Some medical treatments use gold compounds to manage conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, showing that our bodies can interact with the metal in meaningful ways. Still, the natural amount found in us is purely incidental—a whisper of an element more associated with jewelry and wealth than biology.

So yes, there’s gold in you. Not enough to make you rich, but enough to remind us that the human body is a complex mosaic of the periodic table—carrying traces of the Earth itself, down to the most unexpected elements.