How poisoness is mercury?

When you ask how "poisoness" it is, I begin to wonder if there is a femme fatale somewhere slipping mercury into your breakfast.

If, perhaps, you were to ask how poisonous it was, we might have a more productive interchange.
 
I heard it will grant you super-human powers if you are lucky. ;)

Depends on the type of mercury, anywhere from not much to death.
 
On the other hand, you can push the little gobs from the broken old-fashioned thermometer around on your counter and then into a trashbag without apparent harm, as long as you vigorously wash afterward. Just don't eat it, inhale it, or touch it in a form that is absorbable.

Mercury is everywhere on the planet, and you ingest small quantities in many ocean fish, some foods, and just by touching dirt and breathing. If you live in an area with recent (in geologic terms) volcanic activity, you will be exposed to more. Here in the Pacific Northwest, our "background" mercury level is much higher.

As ectoplasm mentioned above, it also depends what form it is in. Some moves readily back out of the human body, and some is retained for longer timespans. Mercury miners from the 60s developed horrible neurological problems, which helped us get a better idea on what kind of damage occurs versus what kinds of exposure levels.
 
I really really really don't mean this as an insult because I can't spell worth a damn but...

"Poisoness" is the cutest spelling error I've ever seen.
 
Nasty in a hollowpoint bullet, fumes come off open to air mercury. Can be seen with infra'red. Used to process gold and my father knew a old man who had so much in him that he could put a copper penny under his arm and it would turn silver, needless to say he died of mercury poison.
 
Here is a picture of a fountain that uses mercury instead of water as a fluid. It was designed and exhibited at the 1937 World's Fair as a memorial to Almaden, and mining region in Spain where mercury is mined, which was ravaged in the Spanish Civil War. At the time is was shown completely openly, but it is now housed behind glass. Notice the mercury scattered in droplets around the lip of the pool. No one, afaik, has ever died from exposure to the fountain.

http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/pix/bar/miro/Almaden1.html

Here is a video of an experiment floating a cannon ball in mercury. Note the experimenter takes no unusual precautions except for wearing rubber gloves - presumably he has to stick his hand into he mercury to retrieve the ball, but he has no problem with splashing it around some.



As a high schooler, I came across about a pound of mercury used to fill barometers, and had a rather fun time playing with it, rolling it around in my hands. Barometers only work, by the way, by exposing the mercury reservoir to open air. As Bob says, the problem starts when you heat it up (boiliing point 357 degrees C, 585 degrees F) and accidently inhale it; at room temperature it has a very low partial pressure. Nothing seeeeems to beee theee matteeeeer with meeeee, as far as I am awair. Just a sticky eeeeee key.

I think it's likely to be pretty difficult to drown in.
 
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Played with Hg on and off for many years - in the pure metal form. In H.S. Chem '63 or so, teacher heated cinnabar (not cinabons) in an open test tube to show us the metallic Hg and we played with it there. So far, no problems from it.
 
I'm always hearing about how pregnant women shouldn't eat too much fish because of the mercury, this never made much sense to me. Unless someone can confirm, is there really that much mercury in fish?
 
Third Eye Open said:
I'm always hearing about how pregnant women shouldn't eat too much fish because of the mercury, this never made much sense to me. Unless someone can confirm, is there really that much mercury in fish?
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Yes.

Do you have access to Google? One simple query would have provided you with an answer in a couple of seconds. :boggled:
 
Old Bob said:
Nasty in a hollowpoint bullet, fumes come off open to air mercury. Can be seen with infra'red. Used to process gold and my father knew a old man who had so much in him that he could put a copper penny under his arm and it would turn silver, needless to say he died of mercury poison.
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The Discovery Channel's gold show a while back followed gold prospectors in the Amazon. They'd find a likely spot on the river bank, spend a couple of days shoveling dirt into a sluice, and end up with about 30 gallons of gold-rich sludge. Then, they put this into a 55 gallon drum with some additional water and about a 1/2 cup of mercury. They mixed it by climbing in and stomping for a couple of hours. Then, they carefully poured out the sludge until they found the mercury - now heavy with whatever gold had been in the sludge. Now came the scary part: one guy took the mercury, put in on a metal dinner plate and heated it with a propane torch to evaporate the mercury and leave the gold behind. His unmasked face just a few inches from the plate as he carefully heated it.

He said something like "I've heard this can make you sick, but I feel fine".

Ugh.
 
Elemental mercury, as a liquid, isn't particularly harmful. People have swallowed blobs of it without damage.
Its the salts and the vapor that will get you.
In dental amalgams, the danger is mostly in inhaling the dust of old fillings being ground down.
 
quarky said:
Elemental mercury, as a liquid, isn't particularly harmful. People have swallowed blobs of it without damage.
Its the salts and the vapor that will get you.
In dental amalgams, the danger is mostly in inhaling the dust of old fillings being ground down.
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Although swallowing elemental mercury is less toxic than inhalation because it is less likely to be absorbed, I think the key word here is "toxic". I wouldn't recommend exposure to elemental mercury in the first place.
 
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