# When in the \*hell\* will kids learn mercury is not a toy? **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [October 7, 2003, 8:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146 "2003-10-07T20:14:56Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 13\ **Page:** 5
**Author:** ![ataraxy22](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ataraxy22/32/307_2.png) [@ataraxy22](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ataraxy22)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 5:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146/81 "2003-10-10T05:59:10Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Biffy the Elephant Shrew \* > \*\*When I went through my childhood chemistry set phase, I had a small vial of mercury that I used to poke and play with, and **I** turned out perfectly norbal. \*\* You’re a goddamn self-professed elephant shrew. That’s hardly normal! err “norbal” I mean. On a more mercurious note, I worked in a chemical stockroom when I was in college and developed a certain fondness for a jar of mercury located therein…it had some serious weight for a relatively small jar. I wasn’t stupid enough to open it, but if I had dropped it, there were pounds of mercury that would have gone everywhere…superfund site? ---
**Author:** ![lurksfromwork](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8491ac/32.png) [@lurksfromwork](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/lurksfromwork)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 6:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146/82 "2003-10-10T06:11:25Z")
**asterion** knows his stuff Got about 300ml of the silvery stuff in a container on the desk in front of me, the results of breaking the glass tube on a largish kew pattern barometer. I have never been inclined to play with it though, to much hassle dealing with spill kits and the clean up. Hg vapour = bad, Methyl mercury = bad. This container will be freighted to our head office as a hazardous material in a suitable container very shortly and reused. It’s fairly expensive stuff. ---
**Author:** ![umop\_ap\_sdn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/dbc845/32.png) [@umop\_ap\_sdn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/umop_ap_sdn)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146/83 "2003-10-10T06:44:38Z")
Yeah, in what situation would someone call 911 to send a damn hazmat team to remove a friggin precious metal from their house!? Sure! Take all my mercury and while you’re at it there’s an ounce and a half of friggin gold in the bottom drawer of my bureau! BTW, how’s pricing on gallium compare to mercury? Last I knew it was pretty steep? ---
**Author:** ![Beltane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/aca169/32.png) [@Beltane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Beltane)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146/84 "2003-10-10T11:49:57Z")
Perhaps the MSDS for mercury would help? [http://anatomy.med.unsw.edu.au/cbl/embryo/msds/mercury.htm](http://anatomy.med.unsw.edu.au/cbl/embryo/msds/mercury.htm) ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 12:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146/85 "2003-10-10T12:32:32Z")
> [@](#): > > It’s too bad there isn’t a non-toxic substance that looks and acts like mercury. It is neat stuff. Well, there are. Several years ago I saw a maze for sale that had liquid blobs as the thing you had to move through the maze. It looked for all the world as if it was designed for mercury, and maybe, long ago, that’s what it was used with. Mercury being dangerous nowadays, of course, they couldn’t sell it that way/ So you put in drops of water with a powdery substance that stuck to the water. The water drops then acted rematkably like mercury. There are probably a lot of powders you could use for that purpose. I suspect _Lycopodium_ (spores) would work pretty well. Of course, it doesn’t have that T2 metallic luster. Bromine is, I thinkm the only other element that’s liquid at room temperature, but it’s noy a liquid. I don’t know if the posters above know it, but the alkali metals (sodium, potassium, lithium, cesium) melt at pretty low temperatures, and they form pretty metal blobs like mercury. Of course, they’re unbelievably reactive, so you don’t want to go playing with them. If the “rolling around a blob of metal” experience is what you’re after, there are several metal eutectics (alloys of two or more metals that have lower melting points than any of the constituents) around. Wood’s metal is the vlassic one, but there are others. Small Parts, Inc. sells ingots of low temperature alloys. They melt at the temperature of hot water (not boiling, though), so you still have to be careful. One of my professors had a lecture demo where he stirred his hot coffee with a Wood’s metal spoon, and it dissolved. He poured off the coffee, then poured the melted metal into a mold. Iy had set before class was over. By the way, I don’t think I’d drink coffee that had been used to melt eutectic. It’s got weird stuff like bismuth in it, and I’m not sure of the health effects. ---
**Author:** ![Balle\_M](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/13edae/32.png) [@Balle\_M](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balle_M)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 3:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146/86 "2003-10-10T15:10:13Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by CalMeacham \* > \*\* > Wood’s metal is the vlassic one, but there are others. \*\* Is that what makes their Kosher Spears so darned tasty? ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 3:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146/87 "2003-10-10T15:57:18Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by asterion \* > \*\*In my opinion, the reaction seen here to mercury is by people who either don’t understand science in general or at least chemistry. \*\* I’m not sure if you’re lumping me in this category, as I did post earlier that mercury causes nervous system damage, but here’s my take on the matter. I taught chemistry for several years at a post-secondary prep school. We had several decent-sized containers of mercury in our locked chemical laboratory storage room, totaling around 50 kg. They were stored in sealed glass containers, and dated back to at least the early 1970s. During our annual environmental inspections, the presence of the mercury was always noted, and we were strongly “encouraged” to justify its presence and/or just get rid of it. I always resisted this, as we were an educational institution, and you never know when it might come in handy. Plus, it would have been extremely difficult to replace. Anyway, I was always supported by my supervisors. When I first started teaching, I did bring one of the smaller containers into class and passed it around to the students when we studying the periodic table of the elements, but I eventually stopped doing this when I considered that a student spilling a kilogram of mercury or so would cause the school to be evacuated. :eek: In subsequent years, I did put the container out for a demonstration in the more closely controlled student lab, though. In our lab, we also had numerous mercury thermometers. While we never got rid of these perfectly good thermometers, we eventually bought enough alcohol thermometers for all of the lab stations, since our students could never get through an entire lab session without breaking a thermometer. :rolleyes: We had a small mercury spill kit in the lab. (It contained powdered sodium sulfide, and precipitated any spilled mercury as the sulfide.) Our standard procedure was that we could clean up to 10 grams of spilled mercury, which covered broken thermometers. Anyway, I’ve cleaned up mercury spills myself without flipping out. Nevertheless, I wouldn’t play with it or allow myself or others to be exposed to it needlessly. Finally, **asterion** , if you understand chemistry, you know that liquid mercury is always accompanied by mercury vapor. ---
**Author:** ![FordPrefect](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/e99b99/32.png) [@FordPrefect](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/FordPrefect)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 4:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146/88 "2003-10-10T16:31:58Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by aasna \* > \*\*I’m […], healthy, intelligent and drop-dead gorgeous. So there. \*\* But what were you like _before_ the mercury exposure? 🙂 ---
**Author:** ![Elza\_B](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Elza\_B](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Elza_B)\ **Post date:** [October 10, 2003, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146/89 "2003-10-10T16:46:22Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Rick \* > \*\*FWIW one of my kids broke a mercury thermometer in their mouth. Having been a chem major (and knowing that Hg is poisonous) I did my correct parent thing and freaked. I called the poison control center to find out what must be done. > Their answer? Ah don’t sweat it, not enough Hg to be dangerous. > :eek: > > Makes the pennies I turned silver as a kid not look so bad. 🙂 \*\* I need to let my sister-in-law know about that turning gold silver part. My brother bought her a yellow gold engagement ring, and while she likes it, she would have rather had white gold or platinum. Ava ---
**Author:** ![Aankh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ebca7d/32.png) [@Aankh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Aankh)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2003, 12:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146/90 "2003-10-11T00:10:54Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by FordPrefect \* > \*\*But what were you like _before_ the mercury exposure? 🙂 \*\* You’ve discovered my secret, now I’m going to have to kill you! Prepare to die! ---
**Author:** ![Winkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/41988e/32.png) [@Winkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Winkie)\ **Post date:** [October 11, 2003, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146/91 "2003-10-11T13:00:29Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by aryk29 \* > \*\*Don’t tell me they can’t use fluorescent lamps anymore! :eek: \*\* Fluorescent lamps are excluded from the school prohibition (at least in practice - I’ll have to go read the legislation again to see if it is an official exclusion.) The reasoning is that the energy savings realized through the use of fluorescent lamps prevents more pollution than breaking lamps could cause. As far as holding a bead of mercury in your hand v. eating contaminated fish - as I understand it, there’s not much mercury absorption through the skin, so you’d basically be worried about breathing in the vapors from the mercury in your hand. I can’t say which would have more effect, except that I think the methyl mercury in fish is more toxic. And as far as how much spilled in a house is dangerous, I don’t think that is a question you can easily answer. It depends on a lot of things - most especially, are there infants or young kids in the house? They are much more susceptible. In general, the advice seems to be that if you break a thermometer and you make your best effort to clean it up and you keep the kids away from the area for a little while, you’ll probably be okay. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Lu\_abu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@An\_Lu\_abu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Lu_abu)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2003, 9:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146/92 "2003-10-12T21:55:14Z")
I once broke a mercury thermometer in my mouth (as a 5 year old) and swallowed most of the contents, but here I am…my parents as very non technical people, did not realise the danger, nor did the nurse in attendance. Not elemental mercury as a previous poster mentioned. I have read, probably on this board, that the name quicksilver came from the effects of one of the compounds of mercury, an excellent laxative. As I remember, I once broke open a wristwatch battery in secondary (high) school to find it contained mercury. I was thoroughly censured. Surprise surprise, I wound up an engineer. ---
**Author:** ![An\_Lu\_abu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/d2c977/32.png) [@An\_Lu\_abu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/An_Lu_abu)\ **Post date:** [October 12, 2003, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146/93 "2003-10-12T21:59:07Z")
doh, the \*\* laxative \*\* wasn’t elemental, the thermometer stuff was of course. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/when-in-the-hell-will-kids-learn-mercury-is-not-a-toy/206146.md?page=4)