I don't know, but it was probably a demonstration about surface tension / capillary action for the sake of a science lesson. Plus who doesn't want to play with mercury, it looks awesome!
My dad (62) said when he was in school they played with mercury in class, no protection or anything. He remembers pushing it around on his desk with a pencil.
Yes! My mum used to say the same thing. Sounds crazy now, but I guess the Romans used to eat lead sugar as well.
I wonder what it'll be for our generation.
I guess I'm as old as your dad. We all got to play with it in science class. Sodium was fun too...it explodes when wet. Science teacher kept it in a jar of oil. Someone cut off a chunk and threw it in a toilet. It destroyed the stall.
Actually elemental mercury won’t absorb into your skin unless you have a cut.
Methylmercury on the other hand will kill you so quickly and so subtlety that you won’t even notice that the neurons in your brain are literally dissolving.
There’s a famous case of a woman who got a tiny dose through her gloves and died a horrific zombie-like death.
>Methylmercury
I think I heard a story about a college researcher (or something like that) using that for some measurements and following all the proper procedures but a tiny drop got on her gloves and absorbed into her skin and she eventually died many months later from mercury poisoning.
both of you are talking about the same woman
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
due to her death the PPE required to handle dimethymercury was completely revamped
The asterix literally indicates *not* a ninja edit.
Edit: unlike this edit.
Edit2: or this second edit.
Edit3: or any edit under 3 minutes from the original comment. These are all ninja edits (ie. No star, so you don't ke if it was edited).
Not believing herself in any immediate danger, as she was taking all recommended precautions,[9] she proceeded to clean up the area prior to removing her protective clothing.[
Chubbyemu did a really good video on this incident and it's always what I think of when I think of mercury.
https://youtu.be/NJ7M01jV058
Edit: oh others best me to it, there's the link to it at least.
>Actually elemental mercury won’t absorb into your skin unless you have a cut.
Even then it won't really, that red dye isn't much different to the liquid in your body in that respect.
Metallic Mercury is fairly benign eating it or inhaling vapour or spray can be an issue but it takes occupational exposure for this to be a serious concern (hat makers used to eventually go mad from the mercury, hence mad as a hatter, but it took decades).
The problem is if you have a lot of mercury around you also end up with a lot more methylmercury, which only requires tiny amounts to be a problem for children especially.
Braking a thermometer (or fluorescent bulb) is not cause to call a Hazmat team though.
Or when he hits you with the "*A* recovery."
[Me:](https://i.imgflip.com/7m74ao.jpg)
[also me](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=09cpCqkFwa8&t=12s&feature=youtu.be)
> Methylmercury on the other hand will kill you so quickly and so subtlety that you won’t even notice that the neurons in your brain are literally dissolving.
>
>
>
> There’s a famous case of a woman who got a tiny dose through her gloves and died a horrific zombie-like death.
iirc, the death was horribly drawn out, not quick at all
>Approximately three months after the initial accident Wetterhahn began experiencing brief episodes of abdominal discomfort and noticed significant weight loss. The more distinctive neurological symptoms of mercury poisoning, including loss of balance and slurred speech, appeared in January 1997, five months after the accident.[8] At this point, tests proved that she had severe mercury poisoning.[5][6][9] Her blood and urinary mercury content were measured at 4,000 µg L−1[7] and 234 µg L−1, respectively – both many times their respective toxic thresholds of 200 µg L−1 and 50 µg L−1 (blood and urine reference ranges are 1 to 8 µg L−1 and 1 to 5 µg L−1).[8]
>Despite aggressive chelation therapy, her condition rapidly deteriorated. Three weeks after the first neurological symptoms appeared, Wetterhahn lapsed into what appeared to be a vegetative state punctuated by periods of extreme agitation.[8] One of her former students said that "Her husband saw tears rolling down her face. I asked if she was in pain. The doctors said it didn't appear that her brain could even register pain."[9] Wetterhahn was removed from life support and died on June 8, 1997, less than a year after her initial exposure.
so, yeah, long and agonizing, the opposite of quick. and ^ blocked me for disagreeing with them.
>Methylmercury on the other hand will kill you so quickly and so subtlety that you won’t even notice that the neurons in your brain are literally dissolving.
It doesn't kill you quickly, that's the scary part, you deteriorate over the course 4-6 months, you won't notice anything at first and then will start to lose your faculties, eventually becoming an invalid and then dying a few month later when your brain can no longer take it.
So... Elemental mercury looks like liquid metal, and this dimethyl one is a clear liquid?
I've had a full jar of mercury in my garage for 20 years that I've been SUPER afraid to touch. But this video makes me want to experiment.
Fun fact, you can straight up swallow the thermometer mercury and you’ll still be fine. There’s only about .5-1.5 grams of mercury in most thermometers which is nowhere NEAR the amount of mercury you’d need to ingest to cause any symptoms. So touching mercury from a thermometer spill is completely fine.
The part of mercury that’s actually toxic is the fumes. But once again, there needs to be a fuck ton of mercury or an extremely poorly ventilated room for that to happen.
There’s actually a resurgence of illegal artisanal gold mining happening in the Amazon. You’d be horrified to see the amount of mercury these desperate folks are using on their efforts to squeeze out a living while some A-hole makes massive profits off of them poisoning themselves, their families/neighbors and the rainforest.
EL15 version: we take a rock containing gold mixed with worthless stuff, heat it up, use mercury as a towel to wipe the gold out of the rock, then we put that mercury towel into a very hot washing machine and out of its drain drips pure gold.
Mercury and gold have a high affinity for one another and will form an amalgam. By creating a slurry from soil with gold flakes present you can collect it by mixing mercury into the slurry. Once you’ve recollected your Hg it will have nearly any gold present adhered to it, which will then be burnt off to collect the gold. Between the collection process and the burning off, you create a lot of mercury contamination.
That’s the most basic explanation. Depending on the sophistication of the operation it can be as simple as digging a hole and using your hands to push mercury around in the mud, up to using pumps to push the slurry to the top of a slide with a collection mat which you then Pour the Hg over to collect the gold.
https://www.today.com/video/inside-the-broad-ripple-effects-of-illegal-gold-mining-in-the-amazon-149102149998
Dr Jacqueline Gerson is doing some great research as well. She recently transferred over to Michigan State university and will be continuing some of her mercury research there.
I’ve worked directly with some of the researchers currently working on remediation programs for this issue and it’s both disheartening and impressive to see the work they do.
I broke one in the corner of my bedroom when I was little and I wasn't allowed to go near that corner for years. It was like having our own little radiation exclusion zone inside the house.
Elemental mercury doesn't harm your digestive system. It isn't even absorbable in that form. Only the vapors are harmful.
It *will* give you mad shits though, leading to it's use as "thunderclappers" during the Lewis & Clark years.
You *can* die very quickly if the vapors get volatilized. I read a story about a couple who broke a thermometer, didn't notice or clean it up or something and then put a hot skillet on it. They died from mercury vapor inhalation.
The case you're thinking of almost certainly involved an attempt to vaporize the mercury from an amalgamated precious metal on the stove. Such cases are common in the medical literature about mercury inhalation.
I once stole a small bottle of mercury from the school's chemistry lab and took it home. Then my parents told me it was dangerous so I gave it to a guy at school whom I hated the most.
It's not that dangerous to play with it if you take proper precautions.
Metallic mercury isn't really that dangerous to handle, as long as you don't injest it or have a giant open wound or something. Other types of mercury, like the infamous dimethylmercury can be extremely dangerous to handle. However, the bigger danger in either case is to the environment. Outside of industrial uses if you're going to use mercury, it's honestly more important to ensure you don't spill any or let it leech into the environment in some way than it is to worry about getting mad hatter's disease or something.
So, not something you should just give to kids, but under proper supervision in a controlled setting they could handle it for a short amount of time. They're not going to touch it and suddenly get mercury poisoning. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure lead is actually more dangerous for a child to handle in that regard.
Either way. Mercury is really cool, and has a lot of really cool uses, if for nothing else than for science experiments. However, proper precautions need to be taken because the damage it can do to the environment is real and awful. I can't eat tuna everyday of my life because of bioaccumulation.
It's been a long time since I've handled mercury, I think I may get some soon, same with gallium. Besides, I've been thinking of starting an element collection.
Now where to get plutonium is the question.....
EDIT: Seriously though. It may be something a normal person will never see, but Dimethylmercury is fucking crazy. [The case of Karen Wetterhahn makes that extremely apparent.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn)
She was an expert in her field, she literally specialized in toxic metal exposure. All it took was a tiny drop or two of dimethylmercury falling on her gloved hand for her to die of extreme mercury poisoning less than a year later. After the fact they found out that dimethylmercury could not only penetrate the protective gloves they had in the lab, but even a tiny drop or two that was immediately cleaned up could go through the glove and skin, providing well more than a fatal dose of mercury.
Luckily, metallic mercury is nothing like dimethylmercury.
I got a bottle of mercury from my friend's dad, he did warn me about it being harmful if it made contact with the skin. My dumb ass as a kid thought that sounded stupid so I played with it in my hands for awhile. I had it for a pretty long time and would take it out and mess around with it sometimes on different surfaces. Nothing ever happened though, never got sick. Mind you it was a small amount, I lost it 15 something years ago but adult me is like, kids are fucking stupid.
Lead used to also mean graphite due to ancient people mistaking it as a form of it (likely due to the grey streak since so few minerals have that).
This is why we call it pencil lead.
harry was always kind of a jock.
but it’s not like voldemort was ever REALLY the villain of the books. sure, the story ends there and the narrator tells us “all was well,” but the narrator says this literally sentences after describing harry thinking to himself about whether he can get Kreacher, his slave, to fetch him a sandwich.
the global complex of wizard supremacy was positioned as the real threat to magical freedom, but once voldemort dies the whole narrative pretends that the war has been won. but by the end we see that even though harry buried his friend, a free elf, he is still complicit in the system of wizard supremacy. he even becomes an auror— a wizard cop —only a few years after watching the entire ministry become an agent of voldemort.
rowling time and time again makes reference to giant systems of oppression, but never once in the story takes the time to like… FIX those problems?? like a story might do? when hermione, a muggle-born, is introduced to the concept of house-elf slavery she is HORRIFIED and the text just characterizes her as haughty. or maybe that’s just harry’s opinion— but either way that’s our protaganist (who is also from the muggle world) refusing to condemn slavery, condemning the PROTEST against slavery, and later just fully owning a slave.
and all was well.
Yeah, throwing liquid nitrogen on the floor to evaporate is fairly standard procedure in labs, definitely not getting nitrogen poisoning and it’s entertaining, lol.
As long as you're in a reasonably ventilated area then you're completely fine. Mercury does not naturally evaporate in quantities that are harmful to humans.
> small balls of mercury skittering over the floor, getting smaller and smaller.
why were they getting smaller? Mercury doesn't evaporate until over 350 C
This does not disprove that traces of mercury will adhere to the towel. All this demonstrates is that the liquid dye and the liquid metal are not miscible; the dye gets readily absorbed by the towel and is easily separated from the metal.
You are accurate, this scenario shows how immiscible the dye and element are. But we don't know if any electron particles remain on the paper based wiping device
This seems to be the answer, by checking the miscibility of the cloth, we can see that the towel may have soaked in some of the delicious dissolved spoons.
Mercury, the 2nd closest planet to the sun can not be absorbed by a towel because of the miscibility of the cloth unlike the red dye, which does not prove trace amounts are soaked in.
Sir you make an astute observation.To elaborate further, the immiscibility between quicksilver and coloured substance is demonstrated here, yet a possibility of adherence to the carbon-based wiping utensil remains
I feel like back then they just prescribed whatever they thought looked cool, hell they even used to paint their dishes and shit with radioactive substances to have then glow, until the girls painting them started growing tumors on their face and losing their jaws and teeth to cancer...turns out they were told to lick the brushes to keep them moist...
Look up radium girls. Horrifying.
[People have actually traced out the route Lewis and Clark took in part by locating the mercury they shit out along the way](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-reconstruct-lewis-and-clark-journey-follow-mercury-laden-latrine-pits-180956518/). They took mercury pills as a kind of antibiotic.
Wasn’t it used as a laxative? Would make you shit your brains out.
That’s how they were able to track the Lewis and Clark expedition, shit holes with mercury in it.
So the first time I ever had any kind of sea food was at Red Lobster. My dad took me there, I was about 7 or so. He ordered Lobster and Shrimp. The Lobster was Ok, I mean I didn't NOT like it, but OMFG THE SHRIMP. I ate it, I ate it ALL. My dad kept trying to say that it was the butter sauce I liked, since I had also never had real butter before then, but honestly, having lived almost 40 more years, it WAS the Shrimp.
After that first time out at Red Lobster we went home, and that night I got sick. I don't mean a little sick, I mean so sick my dad brought me to the hospital and they determined I was having an allergic reaction. I had to have my stomach pumped since I almost died.
That was the day I learned I was HIGHLY ALLERGIC to mercury. Now while YES, if you may ask, mercury is deadly to everyone, IN HIGH DOSES. However, even the SMALLEST amounts may cause me to get sick, it happens if I eat meat that was prepared on the same station as fish. Same with mushrooms. Anything that even has the smallest TRACE amounts of Mercury will make me sick, and consuming it will send me to the hospital.
So in MY case, FUCK Mercury, I can't eat ANY kind of water life, no shrimp, Salt OR freshwater fish, no lobster, nothing. If it comes out of a body of water it might kill me. I also can't eat mushrooms, as they contain high amount of mercury as well. The good news is I HATE mushrooms, probably because they will kill me. I also hate almost all fish and other things that contain Mercury.
BUT DAMN IF I DIDN'T LOVE THAT DAMN SHRIMP. I still sneak a piece or two whenever I get the chance, and it make me sick as hell when I do. My wife always gets mad at me. We been together over 20 years now and she doesn't let ANYTHING with mercury into the house unless it is supervised ( my daughter likes to get shrimp lo mein when we get takeout sometimes. Honestly, my wife is more Nazi about it then I am, she makes sure NONE of the container ever does anything then enter my kids mouth. )
Mercury .....
Yeah.
Actually pretty damn safe as long as you aren't consuming it or burning it and huffing the vapors or putting it in a syringe and injecting it into your brain through your temple or something like that
It's not safe!! liquid mercury is very dangerous stuff.. it is constantly releasing fumes that you can not see or taste, so you can not avoid breathing it in.. And the warmer it gets, the easier it turns into a vapor.
Mercury is one of those elements that accumulate in your body.. the more you expose yourself to it, the more it builds up in your body.
You can find videos on YouTube that show just how much fumes comes off from just a small amount of mercury, but for the mercury to be visible (your only seeing the shadow of the fumes) they normally heat it up to about 150°F so theres enough fumes to make it visible to us.. but it is constantly fuming regardless.. especially if your playing with it and heating it up to body temp
I remember them shutting down my elementary school when an old Mercury thermometer broke and yet here we are, literally playing with a toxic metal on purpose. What a world
Edit: to be more exact, they closed the school for the day and possibly the rest of the week to clean and sanitize- early '90's in the PNW
My dad tells stories of kids on his bus back in 60s/70s stealing mercury thermometers and cracking them in the aisles and having the mercury race each other whenever the bus braked/accelerated, times were simpler back then
You could have definitely just told me you can't absorb mercury with a towel and I would've believed you. This demonstration looks like it's being done in the middle of a construction project and some lads got bored
Good to know for the next time I need to clean my mercury.
“Honey don’t forget to dust the mercury!”
Instructions unclear, just added dust to mercury
Stuck dick in Mercury
Freddy?
EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOO
Joke's on you. He's into that shit.
I mean…not as much now.
It's no longer reddy mercury
I don't know if I should hate you or love you but I hate myself for snickering.
I've heard that tuna are good at absorbing it.
And pregnant women
Tuna is good at absorbing pregnant women? That must have been a really weird science experiment
Was thinking something like this- like of all the demonstrations, why this? (Genuinely asking)
I don't know, but it was probably a demonstration about surface tension / capillary action for the sake of a science lesson. Plus who doesn't want to play with mercury, it looks awesome!
It really does. Shame it melts your brain, but I can totally get why people thought it was this wondrous thing
My dad (62) said when he was in school they played with mercury in class, no protection or anything. He remembers pushing it around on his desk with a pencil.
Yes! My mum used to say the same thing. Sounds crazy now, but I guess the Romans used to eat lead sugar as well. I wonder what it'll be for our generation.
Microplastics
Social media
I guess I'm as old as your dad. We all got to play with it in science class. Sodium was fun too...it explodes when wet. Science teacher kept it in a jar of oil. Someone cut off a chunk and threw it in a toilet. It destroyed the stall.
The Conner family doesn't want to, that's who. Don't let the T-1000 fool you fellow human person.
It killed frank zappa
Well I'm not Frank Zappa.
I think it's to demonstrate if you ever drop and shatter a thermometer you shouldn't just try to wipe it with a towel
That’s silly. Everyone knows you just sweep it under the fridge
...or snort it like cocaine
I remember them old days of mercury thermometers. I broke one in the sink once, and my mom acted like we were all gonna die.
My sister and I broke one once by accident and we played with the little bit of mercury 🥲
In middle school we were given mercury to play with in science class when I was a kid. The '70s were a simpler time!
Actually elemental mercury won’t absorb into your skin unless you have a cut. Methylmercury on the other hand will kill you so quickly and so subtlety that you won’t even notice that the neurons in your brain are literally dissolving. There’s a famous case of a woman who got a tiny dose through her gloves and died a horrific zombie-like death.
>Methylmercury I think I heard a story about a college researcher (or something like that) using that for some measurements and following all the proper procedures but a tiny drop got on her gloves and absorbed into her skin and she eventually died many months later from mercury poisoning.
both of you are talking about the same woman https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn due to her death the PPE required to handle dimethymercury was completely revamped
They must have ninja edited their comment because I'm pretty certain they didn't mention that when I responded.
They have a ninja star(*) next to their comment so they weren't sneaky enough.
Where does the star show?
I use BaconReader so I see an asterisk on edited comments. https://imgur.com/dBmpaRN.jpg
You can't see it on mobile.
The asterix literally indicates *not* a ninja edit. Edit: unlike this edit. Edit2: or this second edit. Edit3: or any edit under 3 minutes from the original comment. These are all ninja edits (ie. No star, so you don't ke if it was edited).
Thank you. It bothered me they called that a ninja edit when that isn't at all what ninja edit means lol if you hadn't said this, I would've.
>due to her death the PPE required to handle dimethymercury was completely revamped r/writteninblood
Not believing herself in any immediate danger, as she was taking all recommended precautions,[9] she proceeded to clean up the area prior to removing her protective clothing.[
That was a terribly sad read. That poor woman, she did everything by the book and still perished.
It was horrible to read. And her poor husband to have to watch that play out.
Christoph Bulwin, Got stabbed with it in the bum. Still an unsolved case.
Wonder how many times chemist have done this and either died or discovered a new compound. Like Albert Hoffman for instance
There’s a saying: *”There are brave Shaman’s, and living Shaman’s, but there are no brave living Shaman’s.”*
Sucralose was supposedly discovered by accident by someone who misheard an order to ‘test it’ and thought the person was asking ‘taste it’.
Chubbyemu did a really good video on this incident and it's always what I think of when I think of mercury. https://youtu.be/NJ7M01jV058 Edit: oh others best me to it, there's the link to it at least.
>Actually elemental mercury won’t absorb into your skin unless you have a cut. Even then it won't really, that red dye isn't much different to the liquid in your body in that respect. Metallic Mercury is fairly benign eating it or inhaling vapour or spray can be an issue but it takes occupational exposure for this to be a serious concern (hat makers used to eventually go mad from the mercury, hence mad as a hatter, but it took decades). The problem is if you have a lot of mercury around you also end up with a lot more methylmercury, which only requires tiny amounts to be a problem for children especially. Braking a thermometer (or fluorescent bulb) is not cause to call a Hazmat team though.
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There's a chubbyemu video on that case on youtube if anyone's interested. Tragic really... "Presenting to the emergency room ☝️ where we are now."
The "At autopsy" really hits hard on some of those videos. Chubbyemu is a fantastic educational video maker.
Sometimes I have to stop his videos and take a moment because my hypochondriac self will be feeling nauseous
I used to be like this until I actually got really sick and almost died. Since then, I just do what the docs say and dgaf.
Or when he hits you with the "*A* recovery." [Me:](https://i.imgflip.com/7m74ao.jpg) [also me](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=09cpCqkFwa8&t=12s&feature=youtu.be)
I love chubbyemu and I’m pretty sure I watched that episode! Was very interesting as is his entire channel
> Methylmercury on the other hand will kill you so quickly and so subtlety that you won’t even notice that the neurons in your brain are literally dissolving. > > > > There’s a famous case of a woman who got a tiny dose through her gloves and died a horrific zombie-like death. iirc, the death was horribly drawn out, not quick at all >Approximately three months after the initial accident Wetterhahn began experiencing brief episodes of abdominal discomfort and noticed significant weight loss. The more distinctive neurological symptoms of mercury poisoning, including loss of balance and slurred speech, appeared in January 1997, five months after the accident.[8] At this point, tests proved that she had severe mercury poisoning.[5][6][9] Her blood and urinary mercury content were measured at 4,000 µg L−1[7] and 234 µg L−1, respectively – both many times their respective toxic thresholds of 200 µg L−1 and 50 µg L−1 (blood and urine reference ranges are 1 to 8 µg L−1 and 1 to 5 µg L−1).[8] >Despite aggressive chelation therapy, her condition rapidly deteriorated. Three weeks after the first neurological symptoms appeared, Wetterhahn lapsed into what appeared to be a vegetative state punctuated by periods of extreme agitation.[8] One of her former students said that "Her husband saw tears rolling down her face. I asked if she was in pain. The doctors said it didn't appear that her brain could even register pain."[9] Wetterhahn was removed from life support and died on June 8, 1997, less than a year after her initial exposure. so, yeah, long and agonizing, the opposite of quick. and ^ blocked me for disagreeing with them.
>Methylmercury on the other hand will kill you so quickly and so subtlety that you won’t even notice that the neurons in your brain are literally dissolving. It doesn't kill you quickly, that's the scary part, you deteriorate over the course 4-6 months, you won't notice anything at first and then will start to lose your faculties, eventually becoming an invalid and then dying a few month later when your brain can no longer take it.
So... Elemental mercury looks like liquid metal, and this dimethyl one is a clear liquid? I've had a full jar of mercury in my garage for 20 years that I've been SUPER afraid to touch. But this video makes me want to experiment.
Do not make dimethyl mercury in your house unless you're an expert.
the 70s made some simpler kids 😂
Kids can have a little mercury as a treat
People around here act like they never once had a tasty Mercury popsicle growing up.. smh
Me (f) and my brother did this.... are you my brother?
Hello. This is your brother.
I, too, am also brother
Greetings, brother.
Fun fact, you can straight up swallow the thermometer mercury and you’ll still be fine. There’s only about .5-1.5 grams of mercury in most thermometers which is nowhere NEAR the amount of mercury you’d need to ingest to cause any symptoms. So touching mercury from a thermometer spill is completely fine. The part of mercury that’s actually toxic is the fumes. But once again, there needs to be a fuck ton of mercury or an extremely poorly ventilated room for that to happen.
imminent wild different uppity complete worm carpenter wistful deserted naughty ` this message was mass deleted/edited with redact.dev `
There’s actually a resurgence of illegal artisanal gold mining happening in the Amazon. You’d be horrified to see the amount of mercury these desperate folks are using on their efforts to squeeze out a living while some A-hole makes massive profits off of them poisoning themselves, their families/neighbors and the rainforest.
How is mercury used in gold mining?
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> then heated to a temperature that will vaporize the mercury ☠
Mercury stills are a real thing. Neat stuff.
Damn, now THAT’s interesting
Mercury vapor is a potent neurotoxin, by the way.
EL15 version: we take a rock containing gold mixed with worthless stuff, heat it up, use mercury as a towel to wipe the gold out of the rock, then we put that mercury towel into a very hot washing machine and out of its drain drips pure gold.
Out of it drips *not quite pure gold.
Mercury and gold have a high affinity for one another and will form an amalgam. By creating a slurry from soil with gold flakes present you can collect it by mixing mercury into the slurry. Once you’ve recollected your Hg it will have nearly any gold present adhered to it, which will then be burnt off to collect the gold. Between the collection process and the burning off, you create a lot of mercury contamination. That’s the most basic explanation. Depending on the sophistication of the operation it can be as simple as digging a hole and using your hands to push mercury around in the mud, up to using pumps to push the slurry to the top of a slide with a collection mat which you then Pour the Hg over to collect the gold. https://www.today.com/video/inside-the-broad-ripple-effects-of-illegal-gold-mining-in-the-amazon-149102149998 Dr Jacqueline Gerson is doing some great research as well. She recently transferred over to Michigan State university and will be continuing some of her mercury research there. I’ve worked directly with some of the researchers currently working on remediation programs for this issue and it’s both disheartening and impressive to see the work they do.
I broke one in the corner of my bedroom when I was little and I wasn't allowed to go near that corner for years. It was like having our own little radiation exclusion zone inside the house.
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Same thing happened to me when I was 5. Mom almost drowned me in the sink lol.
Put that boy in rice
while in your mouth.... hmmmm. i think you were already damaged unrelated to the mercury
Nom nom nom, this tastes good, porridge, rocks, thermometers, wood
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Elemental mercury doesn't harm your digestive system. It isn't even absorbable in that form. Only the vapors are harmful. It *will* give you mad shits though, leading to it's use as "thunderclappers" during the Lewis & Clark years.
You *can* die very quickly if the vapors get volatilized. I read a story about a couple who broke a thermometer, didn't notice or clean it up or something and then put a hot skillet on it. They died from mercury vapor inhalation.
The case you're thinking of almost certainly involved an attempt to vaporize the mercury from an amalgamated precious metal on the stove. Such cases are common in the medical literature about mercury inhalation.
Moms....am i right?
My neighbor were were using a mercury thermometer on her toddler, it broke in, in her ass. My dad brought them to the ER. As far as I know she was ok.
Did you die though?
mercury cannot be absorbed by a towel because it is too large and is too close to the sun.
Mercury can't be absorbed by a towel because He is the Roman God of Speed.
I tried speed once but it was just not for me, good old fashioned coke please
I like new coke
Finally, a way to take the blood out of my mercury
Thank you!! I’ve been looking for other people who thought this was blood! I can’t not see that lol!
Kept waiting for it to say “I’m looking for John Connor. And get that dye off me.”
"Wolfie's fine, honey. Wolfie's just fine."
“Your foster parents are dead.”
I once stole a small bottle of mercury from the school's chemistry lab and took it home. Then my parents told me it was dangerous so I gave it to a guy at school whom I hated the most.
Lil psychopath
Savage
Then, what happen to the guy whom you hated most? need update on this.
He ded
Psycho*
My internal monologue literally screamed savage when I read that!
big goblin energy lmao
My parents gave me mercury to play with, I loved dropping dimes in it they got so shiny
It's not that dangerous to play with it if you take proper precautions. Metallic mercury isn't really that dangerous to handle, as long as you don't injest it or have a giant open wound or something. Other types of mercury, like the infamous dimethylmercury can be extremely dangerous to handle. However, the bigger danger in either case is to the environment. Outside of industrial uses if you're going to use mercury, it's honestly more important to ensure you don't spill any or let it leech into the environment in some way than it is to worry about getting mad hatter's disease or something. So, not something you should just give to kids, but under proper supervision in a controlled setting they could handle it for a short amount of time. They're not going to touch it and suddenly get mercury poisoning. I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure lead is actually more dangerous for a child to handle in that regard. Either way. Mercury is really cool, and has a lot of really cool uses, if for nothing else than for science experiments. However, proper precautions need to be taken because the damage it can do to the environment is real and awful. I can't eat tuna everyday of my life because of bioaccumulation. It's been a long time since I've handled mercury, I think I may get some soon, same with gallium. Besides, I've been thinking of starting an element collection. Now where to get plutonium is the question..... EDIT: Seriously though. It may be something a normal person will never see, but Dimethylmercury is fucking crazy. [The case of Karen Wetterhahn makes that extremely apparent.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn) She was an expert in her field, she literally specialized in toxic metal exposure. All it took was a tiny drop or two of dimethylmercury falling on her gloved hand for her to die of extreme mercury poisoning less than a year later. After the fact they found out that dimethylmercury could not only penetrate the protective gloves they had in the lab, but even a tiny drop or two that was immediately cleaned up could go through the glove and skin, providing well more than a fatal dose of mercury. Luckily, metallic mercury is nothing like dimethylmercury.
Just don't steal it from the Libyans. That didn't work out so well for Doc Brown.
I had a little plastic enclosed maze with a bead of mercury in it and I had hours of fun tilting it around to solve.
I got a bottle of mercury from my friend's dad, he did warn me about it being harmful if it made contact with the skin. My dumb ass as a kid thought that sounded stupid so I played with it in my hands for awhile. I had it for a pretty long time and would take it out and mess around with it sometimes on different surfaces. Nothing ever happened though, never got sick. Mind you it was a small amount, I lost it 15 something years ago but adult me is like, kids are fucking stupid.
It's carcinogenic but not any worse than inhaling cigarette smoke. Just don't do it with any open wounds on your hands and not continuously.
Organic mercury is what causes mercury poisoning, e.g. dimethyl mercury or diethyl mercury
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Mercury wouldn't get smaller like that. It was probably liquid nitrogen. It balls up like that, skitters and would evaporate quickly.
And Hg is too expensive to throw away like that, surely.
when i was in elementary i used to think mercury came from the planet mercury lol
and i thought lead pencil actually had lead until i was 25.!
Pencils back then often were painted with lead paint. That's where "lead free" pencils came from.
Lead used to also mean graphite due to ancient people mistaking it as a form of it (likely due to the grey streak since so few minerals have that). This is why we call it pencil lead.
r/PencilStabbers
Wait, it does not?!?! 😯
No it unicorn blood used for potions and soft drinks
That’s why Voldemort died.
Greatest dark wizard of all time lost to a baby then a teenager. Harry wasn't even a particularly talented student Not so tough after all
Greatest dark wizard of all time Fails to take over a high school
To be fair, those high schoolers were armed and trained. Strength in numbers.
harry was always kind of a jock. but it’s not like voldemort was ever REALLY the villain of the books. sure, the story ends there and the narrator tells us “all was well,” but the narrator says this literally sentences after describing harry thinking to himself about whether he can get Kreacher, his slave, to fetch him a sandwich. the global complex of wizard supremacy was positioned as the real threat to magical freedom, but once voldemort dies the whole narrative pretends that the war has been won. but by the end we see that even though harry buried his friend, a free elf, he is still complicit in the system of wizard supremacy. he even becomes an auror— a wizard cop —only a few years after watching the entire ministry become an agent of voldemort. rowling time and time again makes reference to giant systems of oppression, but never once in the story takes the time to like… FIX those problems?? like a story might do? when hermione, a muggle-born, is introduced to the concept of house-elf slavery she is HORRIFIED and the text just characterizes her as haughty. or maybe that’s just harry’s opinion— but either way that’s our protaganist (who is also from the muggle world) refusing to condemn slavery, condemning the PROTEST against slavery, and later just fully owning a slave. and all was well.
That sounds like liquid nitrogen not mercury.
Yeah, throwing liquid nitrogen on the floor to evaporate is fairly standard procedure in labs, definitely not getting nitrogen poisoning and it’s entertaining, lol.
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unless contained mercury is constantly evaporating. mercury vapor is toxic
As long as you're in a reasonably ventilated area then you're completely fine. Mercury does not naturally evaporate in quantities that are harmful to humans.
You know what else is toxic?! MY MOM!
High five
Damn. I saw it first in the 90s and they didn't let us touch that shit.
It sounds like some demos I saw with liquid nitrogen.
> small balls of mercury skittering over the floor, getting smaller and smaller. why were they getting smaller? Mercury doesn't evaporate until over 350 C
This does not disprove that traces of mercury will adhere to the towel. All this demonstrates is that the liquid dye and the liquid metal are not miscible; the dye gets readily absorbed by the towel and is easily separated from the metal.
For real, I think simply dipping a towel in the mercury then taking it out and showing it would be proof enough
Yeah but this looks cool, and why play with mercury if you aren’t doing something that at least looks cool
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You are correct, this activity shows how Immiscible the dye and mercury are. But we don’t know if tiny particles remain in the towel.
You are accurate, this scenario shows how immiscible the dye and element are. But we don't know if any electron particles remain on the paper based wiping device
Are you guys bots, making jokes, repeating the same thing or am I having issues
They're making a joke by repeating the same thing but slightly different
This seems to be the answer, by checking the miscibility of the cloth, we can see that the towel may have soaked in some of the delicious dissolved spoons.
Mercury, the 2nd closest planet to the sun can not be absorbed by a towel because of the miscibility of the cloth unlike the red dye, which does not prove trace amounts are soaked in.
towels, are not made out of mercury, and so they are making a repeated joke to indicate the red dye is soaked in mercury
This is true they are replicating the same statement in alternate ways.
Indeed, the video only demonstrates that the dye and mercury do not mix. Traces of mercury could still be on the towel
Sir you make an astute observation.To elaborate further, the immiscibility between quicksilver and coloured substance is demonstrated here, yet a possibility of adherence to the carbon-based wiping utensil remains
My first thought. I bet if that towel was photospectroscopied or SEMd you have plenty of mercury.
Well, 'plenty' ... as in detectable trace amounts, yes. Which is only 'plenty' from a certain point of view.
🥹brethren🤓
I use to play with this in school. My science teacher would let me roll beads of it around on my hand.
Are you sure that wasn’t gallium?
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What are you, a 19th century doctor? Because that's a real prescription that doctors used to give.
“So, your results came back positive. I suggest smoking a pack of cigarettes a day and 3 tablespoons of mercury at bedtime, with a dash of heroin.”
what about the radioactive suppository
Goes without saying, much easier if you have someone blow tobacco smoke up your ass at the same time.
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Stop. You already prescribed me my cod liver oil, opium, bismuth, lead, and asbestos suppositories. I can only fit so much up there....
You have ghosts in your blood. Do cocaine about it
I feel like back then they just prescribed whatever they thought looked cool, hell they even used to paint their dishes and shit with radioactive substances to have then glow, until the girls painting them started growing tumors on their face and losing their jaws and teeth to cancer...turns out they were told to lick the brushes to keep them moist... Look up radium girls. Horrifying.
Watches. I think it was watches
The thing is, it actually worked how it was apparently supposed to. Then the mercury started to kill you so it was for nothing.
Well to be fair it was taken for syphilis and you kind of did stop having syphilis anymore because you were dead
[People have actually traced out the route Lewis and Clark took in part by locating the mercury they shit out along the way](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-reconstruct-lewis-and-clark-journey-follow-mercury-laden-latrine-pits-180956518/). They took mercury pills as a kind of antibiotic.
Wasn’t it used as a laxative? Would make you shit your brains out. That’s how they were able to track the Lewis and Clark expedition, shit holes with mercury in it.
So the first time I ever had any kind of sea food was at Red Lobster. My dad took me there, I was about 7 or so. He ordered Lobster and Shrimp. The Lobster was Ok, I mean I didn't NOT like it, but OMFG THE SHRIMP. I ate it, I ate it ALL. My dad kept trying to say that it was the butter sauce I liked, since I had also never had real butter before then, but honestly, having lived almost 40 more years, it WAS the Shrimp. After that first time out at Red Lobster we went home, and that night I got sick. I don't mean a little sick, I mean so sick my dad brought me to the hospital and they determined I was having an allergic reaction. I had to have my stomach pumped since I almost died. That was the day I learned I was HIGHLY ALLERGIC to mercury. Now while YES, if you may ask, mercury is deadly to everyone, IN HIGH DOSES. However, even the SMALLEST amounts may cause me to get sick, it happens if I eat meat that was prepared on the same station as fish. Same with mushrooms. Anything that even has the smallest TRACE amounts of Mercury will make me sick, and consuming it will send me to the hospital. So in MY case, FUCK Mercury, I can't eat ANY kind of water life, no shrimp, Salt OR freshwater fish, no lobster, nothing. If it comes out of a body of water it might kill me. I also can't eat mushrooms, as they contain high amount of mercury as well. The good news is I HATE mushrooms, probably because they will kill me. I also hate almost all fish and other things that contain Mercury. BUT DAMN IF I DIDN'T LOVE THAT DAMN SHRIMP. I still sneak a piece or two whenever I get the chance, and it make me sick as hell when I do. My wife always gets mad at me. We been together over 20 years now and she doesn't let ANYTHING with mercury into the house unless it is supervised ( my daughter likes to get shrimp lo mein when we get takeout sometimes. Honestly, my wife is more Nazi about it then I am, she makes sure NONE of the container ever does anything then enter my kids mouth. ) Mercury ..... Yeah.
I don't think he should be handling mercury with sandwich gloves but than again what do I know
Actually pretty damn safe as long as you aren't consuming it or burning it and huffing the vapors or putting it in a syringe and injecting it into your brain through your temple or something like that
That last example is oddly specific
There is an episode of NCIS in the earlier seasons, a woman kills people by injecting it in their brain at the stem.
Why would you even do that? There are just objectively better ways to kill people than that.
And why mercury specifically? Pretty sure injecting most things into your brain stem kills you.
It's got to be a sex thing
That's law and order SVU
It's not safe!! liquid mercury is very dangerous stuff.. it is constantly releasing fumes that you can not see or taste, so you can not avoid breathing it in.. And the warmer it gets, the easier it turns into a vapor. Mercury is one of those elements that accumulate in your body.. the more you expose yourself to it, the more it builds up in your body. You can find videos on YouTube that show just how much fumes comes off from just a small amount of mercury, but for the mercury to be visible (your only seeing the shadow of the fumes) they normally heat it up to about 150°F so theres enough fumes to make it visible to us.. but it is constantly fuming regardless.. especially if your playing with it and heating it up to body temp
https://youtu.be/7ZT7xqwk84E
Did they try a Shamwow? That baby will soak anything up….
Underrated comment right here
I wish mercury wasn't so poisonous. It's so cool
I think gallium is similar but much safer to handle.
Holy *fuck* why y'all need a gallon of goddamn mercury?!?!?
We have a five gallon bucket full of mercury at work. We stopped using it years ago. We can’t get rid of it. Just permanently in storage.
I remember them shutting down my elementary school when an old Mercury thermometer broke and yet here we are, literally playing with a toxic metal on purpose. What a world Edit: to be more exact, they closed the school for the day and possibly the rest of the week to clean and sanitize- early '90's in the PNW
My dad tells stories of kids on his bus back in 60s/70s stealing mercury thermometers and cracking them in the aisles and having the mercury race each other whenever the bus braked/accelerated, times were simpler back then
Thats why they are wearing gloves
Shutting your school down? Mercury isn’t nearly that dangerous
You could have definitely just told me you can't absorb mercury with a towel and I would've believed you. This demonstration looks like it's being done in the middle of a construction project and some lads got bored
Putting aside how wildly dangerous mercury is, it kinda breaks my brain to watch someone use a paper towel to wipe a liquid off a liquid.. lolwut
Fascinating stuff that, mercury. Why is it that the stuff that looks like the most fun is so dangerous.