Many of the heavy metals such as mercury, lead, thallium, cadmium, and arsenic exert toxic effects largely by binding to or otherwise interfering with organic sulfur compounds or groups in the body. What is the chemical reason that many of these heavy metal elements and their compounds seem to bind easily to sulfur and sulfur compounds?
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4HSAB explains this fairly decently – orthocresol Apr 02 '17 at 00:27
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Strongly related: http://chemistry.stackexchange.com/questions/275/why-do-thiols-have-such-a-propensity-for-bonding-with-mercury/277 – Nilay Ghosh Apr 02 '17 at 03:09
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Roughly speaking, they both have big squishy electron density, so they smudge together very easily (soft acid-base as orthocresol suggests). – Nij Apr 02 '17 at 04:09