Microgram

Microgram
A nutrition facts label displaying, for example, the amount of folic acid in micrograms
General information
Unit system	SI
Unit of	mass
Symbol	μg

In the metric system, a microgram or microgramme is a unit of mass equal to one millionth (1×10⁻⁶) of a gram. Two different abbreviations are commonly used. The International System of Units (SI) uses μg, where the SI prefix "micro-" is represented by the Greek letter μ (mu). However, mcg is preferred for medical information in the United States (US) and United Kingdom. A third abbreviation, the Greek letter γ (gamma), is no longer recommended.^[1]

The US Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) and the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) recommend that mcg should be used, rather than μg, when communicating medical information.^[2] This is due to the risk that μ might be misread as m, for "milli-", which is equal to one thousandth (1×10⁻³). Such a misreading could result in a thousandfold overdose of a drug or medicine. However, mcg is also the symbol for the obsolete unit millicentigram, derived from the centimetre–gram–second system of units and equal to10 μg.

Usually, a sequence of the Unicode code point U+03BC μ GREEK SMALL LETTER MU followed by the Latin letter U+0067 g LATIN SMALL LETTER G should be used. However, if μ is not available it may be represented with U+0075 u LATIN SMALL LETTER U, U+0055 U LATIN CAPITAL LETTER U or the legacy Unicode symbol U+00B5 µ MICRO SIGN. In Chinese, Japanese and Korean writing a fullwidth version U+338D ㎍ SQUARE MU G should be used.^[3]

Look up microgram, μg, or mcg in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.

• List of SI prefixes
• Orders of magnitude (mass), listing a few items that have a mass of around 1 μg.