Sciencemadness Discussion Board

mercury disappearence

neptunium - 13-12-2011 at 07:20

why is it so hard to come accross mercury these days? toxic ? unhealthy? so is antifreeze, chineese toys, gasoline, etc..
why cant we get some mercury cheap like we used to ? at a time when people drink windshield fluid to get high how toxic is the quicksilver really???
back in the days when people took responsability for their actions, i did play with the liquid metal...and so did 200 other kids at school...noone got sick, even those who put it in their mouthS!! everybody turned out just fine !
so now what? its still possible to order small amount of the stuff .... but it aint cheap!
i was gonna separate Hg from natural cinnabar ....until i saw the price on cinnabar crystals!
i donnated 2 liters of the heavy stuff to a university way back when...
dearly regret it now!


[Edited on 13-12-2011 by neptunium]

Neil - 13-12-2011 at 07:21

Fear.

neptunium - 13-12-2011 at 07:25

fear ? mercury is such a usefull metal both in chemistry AND physics! what a tragedy

Neil - 13-12-2011 at 07:47

Yes, but Fear is a useful medium in both politics and marketing.

neptunium - 13-12-2011 at 07:49

i still need some mercury ....and a lot of it!

Neil - 13-12-2011 at 07:57

look for old instruments being auctioned off. Old blood pressure devices, traps, gauges, old thermostats etc.

neptunium - 13-12-2011 at 08:02

some industrial electrical switches have quite a bit in them...but i like the challenge!
is it illegal to get samples fr:Dom an abandonned mercury mine ? :D

jsc - 13-12-2011 at 08:15

This is why:

http://www.japanfocus.org/-William-Underwood/2011

neptunium - 13-12-2011 at 08:28

i've heard about this case before its a tragedy

Adas - 13-12-2011 at 09:56

Mercury may not affect your health when you are young, but when you get older, you start to get symptoms of poisoning. Nothing pleasurable, I think.

[Edited on 13-12-2011 by Adas]

neptunium - 13-12-2011 at 10:13

it all boils down to common sense i wont put it in my mouth ....promise!

Adas - 13-12-2011 at 10:16

Quote: Originally posted by neptunium  
it all boils down to common sense i wont put it in my mouth ....promise!


And I suggest you to play with it only in good ventilated room or outside. Don't let it spill on metals, it can create an amalgam and stay in the metal, while still evaporating. Not good.

neptunium - 13-12-2011 at 10:23

i like the chemical challenge of isolating samples of each element for collection...its just for show and sometimes look at it in its bottle and try to spark an interest in chemistry among my friends or the kids you know ...also de-dramatized the whole fear of science ...if i can only get one person interested i`ll be happy

Panache - 13-12-2011 at 15:27

Quote: Originally posted by jsc  
This is why:

http://www.japanfocus.org/-William-Underwood/2011


I studied this disaster a little at uni but only really the chemistry of it, thankyou for posting this link to such a succinct well written update on the politics of it.

Endimion17 - 13-12-2011 at 17:14

Threads like these make me feel happy to live in a world where mercury is something that's being avoided as much as possible.

Neptunium, you have no idea how wrong you are because you clearly show the lack of knowledge about its toxicity.
No one will get hurt by simply touching it.

I don't know why are some people just making threads like they're making breakfast. There are tons of similar threads. There's no need to make your own.

[Edited on 14-12-2011 by Endimion17]

▒Nick▒ - 14-12-2011 at 03:05

Mercury fascinates me. Elemental mercury does not pose a real hazard if you play with it a little bit, but mercury is a powerful neurotoxin, and long exposure to it can do damage. It makes me sad however when people go nuts and evacuate a building because of a broken fluorescent lamp. That's unnecessary. There is such a tiny amount of mercury in there, I really don't think it would kill everyone in the building.

The really dangerous part of mercury is its salts. Insoluble salts particularly. They can be absorbed through the skin and poisonous mercury ions are released in your body. Dimethyl mercury, if a tiny drop gets on your latex gloves, it will go right through them, in your skin, and literally rot out your brain until you die.

The real thing you need to do is be safe, I wouldn't let a jar of mercury sit open indoors.

Endimion17 - 14-12-2011 at 03:45

You mean soluble salts. ;)

I've never heard of any case of building evacuation because a fluorescent lamp broke. That's just an utterly stupid thing to do, but I do believe there are people capable of doing it, and I believe some might do it for criminal reasons (money laundry, nepotism, etc.)

Next thing I'll do is opening a fluorescent tube in front of a screen lit by UV-C. I doubt there's enough vapor to be visible. The pressure inside is so low that if you snap the glass seal underwater, water will rise to the top, leaving few bubbles of presumably some inert gas doped with mercury vapor. I've never seen any macroscopic beads in any fluorescent tube. Broken thermometer will probably emit more vapor in one minute than tens of tubes in few months.

LanthanumK - 14-12-2011 at 06:00

That would be a good experiment to try.

I keep liquid mercury and am fascinated by its chemistry, but I just do not have the resources needed to experiment with it, so it stays in a sealed container in a safe place.

The main problem with mercury is its chronic effects. They are not visible immediately, unlike drinking antifreeze. Mercury spills easily and breaks into small spheres which are spread everywhere. These small spheres continuously emit poisonous fumes. One may be poisoned with mercury and not even know it.

I'm not sure what you'll need two liters of mercury for, even if you plan to do some experiments.

neptunium - 14-12-2011 at 06:54

I appreciate the feedback from Endimion17 however i think it would be fair to make 0one thing clear.
the point of this discussion was to address the paranoia over mercury , i do not dispute its toxicity simply the exageration as mentionned previously with the example of a fluorescent bulb .
the average amount of mercury in theses lamps average arround 4700 mg/kg of phosphor.
giving that only a few grams of phosphor are present in any lamp we are looking at a few milligrams of mercury at best.
Now if your job everyday requires to deal with broken fluorescent light bulb you`d HAVE to protect yourself against the bioaccumullation on Hg from everyday exposure.
but having a jar of mercury sealed on a shelf in a plastic bag taking out once or twice a month ? pardon me but i remain skeptical.
My point was not so much to argue the toxicity of mercury (and especially its salts) ,


Endimion17 - 14-12-2011 at 07:23

As LanthanumK said, the problem is that is VERY EASY to spread it in fine, almost invisible droplets. Every time you pour it, extremely little spheres jump out and land who knows where, and it takes years for them to evaporate. One error and you end up with a contaminated room for years. That's why it's notorious, because it's so easy to contaminate an area.

If you don't ventilate that room enough, and use it on a daily basis as living quarters, you'll end up poisoned in few months. It will start with mild symptoms like forgetfulness, decreased ability to solve logic problems and to learn new information (great for chemistry students!), mild tremors, and then proceeds to increasingly vivid dreams and feeling sick and tired. I really don't think I should explain it in details, there are more than enough described symptoms and stories about that kind of poisoning on the Web. It's very scary. You loose your mental capabilities, your intelect drops. It happened to scientists quite often.

Though its biological half time is long, in certain cases people would recover. For example, scientists working in rooms with lots of vapors would feel very sick and would loose their mental capabilities due to acute poisoning, but after few weeks without significant mercury sources, symptoms would cease.

If you expose your body to its vapors and liquid form for several times in a year or so, you develop an allergy. Next exposure triggers an allergic reaction. Your fingers go pink and you feel tired and sick.

So the danger isn't immediate, but in the fact that it's extremely easy to fuck up your workplace. You can't collect <0.1mm beads stuck in concrete pores, yet they stil evaporate.
Trays are a must when working with mercury, and if you have to work in a room, ventilate it. It would probably be the best if you designate it as "contaminated" and cover the floor with sulphur for a long time. I did that. My lab was covered with sulphur for almost one year because one drop fell on the floor. At least it's cool to walk on sulphur. It's squeaky and soft like fresh snow.

The worst danger comes if you're female, preparing to have a child or even worse, being pregnant and working in those fumes. Few months later, don't be surprised if you deliver a freak fetus. It fucks up just about every early phase of embryo. Fetal development is characterized by problems with neural tube defects. Miscarriage is quite possible. Mental problems are almost a rule.

Mr. Wizard - 14-12-2011 at 07:48

I agree there is paranoia about chemicals in general, and about mercury. I was one of those kids who had access to mercury as a child and from age 10 played with it in my room, spilled it , coated coins with it, mixed it with melted solder, and did everything you were not supposed to do with it. I know what hot mercury vapor smells like :o, which is not a good thing. We used mercurochrome on cuts, and had plenty of amalgam fillings too. I really don't know what it has done to me, but I doubt it has been very helpful. All that stupidity aside, I would recommend treating the substance with care. Store your mercury next to the floor where it cant's fall off a shelf. Put it's container inside another covered container with some sulfur a centimeter deep around the central container. In a month or so you will see the black coating of the sulfide on top of the sulfur. Yes ... it does leak vapor.

Being careful is not being paranoid or stupid. It's easy to laugh at other peoples' ignorance about chemicals but it's just as bad to discount a real danger. Use those gloves, goggles, dust masks, hoods, ventilation, and your brain. Fear harnessed properly is a good evolutionary development. Always ask yourself "what could go wrong?"

entropy51 - 14-12-2011 at 07:53

Quote: Originally posted by entropy51  
I have no experience with the alkylmercury cmpds, but lots with the metal.

Now I'm very cautious about Hg, and I work so that any spill will be contained. I keep the metal under water, hoping that cuts down on surface vaporization.

But Hg must not be as toxic as everyone thinks. Years ago I worked in a lab where we did gasometric analysis with elaborate glassware filled with Hg. Someone was always raising a leveling bulb too rapidly and breaking a stopcock clean off the top of the gas burette. A stream of Hg would go flying. NONE of this was in a hood. We cleaned the Hg by swishing it around in a big steel basin of soapy water with ungloved hands. This was not an atypical situation in those days and no one got sick. Many others can tell similar stories of days gone by.

And of course kids were forever bringing Hg to school and almalgamating pennies with it and everything else imaginable. Nowadays that's a major HAZMAT. Didn't seem to hurt us.

So like I said, I'm very careful nowadays and I fear spills greatly. But I think the hazards are over-rated. I'm much more fearful of soluble Pb cmpds.

Wizzard - 14-12-2011 at 08:35

It's not the mercury which poisons people, it's the lack of common sense! Yes, mercury can be toxic. Use it right, and it's useful. Use it poorly, and it's toxic! Use it very poorly, and it's not jsut toxic to you- Thats the catch.

Dumb people ruin all the run for the smart people, plain and simple. Fireworks, fast cars, fun drugs :p People who misuse/abuse them give them a bad rap, get laws passed to stop the idiots and the sensible all the same.

busukxuan - 14-12-2011 at 09:44

Maybe they found it harder to sell to those who are not serious at playing with Hg when people started getting aware of it, but people who are serious and want it for research or pros who want to experiment with it will still buy mercury, so research grade mercury's retail price increased so that they can earn more money.

Next time when you dispose mercury you better solidify it by reacting with other thing, e.g. turning it back into cinnabar with sulfur. If possible, you can reuse uncontaminated mercury for other experiments so that you don't waste money and that you can reduce the amount of mercury that escape into the environment.

neptunium - 14-12-2011 at 10:30

i couldnt agree more with Wizzard...

i had planned on storing it in a sealed jar inside a plastic bag on a steel tray next to a fan blowing inside air outside...

&#9618;Nick&#9618; - 14-12-2011 at 12:28

Quote: Originally posted by Endimion17  
You mean soluble salts. ;)

I've never heard of any case of building evacuation because a fluorescent lamp broke. That's just an utterly stupid thing to do, but I do believe there are people capable of doing it, and I believe some might do it for criminal reasons (money laundry, nepotism, etc.)

Next thing I'll do is opening a fluorescent tube in front of a screen lit by UV-C. I doubt there's enough vapor to be visible. The pressure inside is so low that if you snap the glass seal underwater, water will rise to the top, leaving few bubbles of presumably some inert gas doped with mercury vapor. I've never seen any macroscopic beads in any fluorescent tube. Broken thermometer will probably emit more vapor in one minute than tens of tubes in few months.


Yeah, I meant soluble. But I read somewhere that schools have been evacuated because of a broken thermometer. But even that is overkill. I once heard as well, a 'professional' saying if a fluorescent light bulb breaks the room should be evacuated immediately. That's extreme overkill. The world today is just safety nuts.

I'm not saying that it is paranoid to be scared of mercury vapors, its just that an extremely tiny amount isn't going to do any thing. If you are working with broken thermometers, you'd need to clean it up with sulfur immediately, and if dealing with larger amounts of mercury, work in a tray outside or in a well ventilated area. Its not good to play with a several ounces of mercury in a poorly ventilated room in your house.

[Edited on 14-12-2011 by ▒Nick▒]

hissingnoise - 14-12-2011 at 12:35

It's dangerous to underestimate mercury's toxicity . . . just saying!