Had access to mercury in the mid 60s. My father worked in a chlorine plant and said it used to run in the channels next to the road in the plant. He brought a tiny amount home and we played with it. One discovery was if you rubbed it onto a penny coin it overall made it appear to be silver which one of us managed to pass off as a 2 shilling coin in the milkbar. Lollies all round.
It is amazing how much mercury was splashed around in industry back in the day! It is an incredible metal, and a lot of fun to play with I'm sure ;-) Ha ha, clever idea with the pennys! Wonder how long it took the shop keeper to cotton on 🤣
Without dismissing it's toxicity at all, metallic mercury is relatively innocuous for casual contact - the vapour is very dangerous and the chemistry - especially methyl mercury, one of the first compounds to form when it gets into the environment - is extremely toxic... I totally get why it would be restricted even if you were to consider the metal to be "safe". If you ever have to clean up a spill, sulphur powder is your friend - it readily coats and reacts with mercury to form inert cinnabar. Of course, having access to sulphur powder is probably as likely as having access to hazmat teams...
True indeed, the childhood memory of many older people of playing with mercury, often at school, probably did them no harm at all. The vapour concerns me as does methyl mercury, I've been taking samples off various parts of my property here to test for that. For the once or twice a year that bottle of mercury is out of it's storage there is a spill kit containing sulphur powder for just that reason ;-)
Sounds a bit odd that the limit for personal possession is 0.1g. Jaycar sells mercury tilt switches to the general public which have about 0.5g mercury in each switch for $3.60 each. (I do some amateur chemistry which occasionally involves mercury and I use those tilt switches) Don't worry, I'm very careful with waste ie. convert it to an insoluble salt usually the carbonate, put it with my other heavy metal waste eg nickel in an ice cream tub then add cement. The result is a brick in plastic that I put in general waste to landfill.
Had access to mercury in the mid 60s. My father worked in a chlorine plant and said it used to run in the channels next to the road in the plant. He brought a tiny amount home and we played with it. One discovery was if you rubbed it onto a penny coin it overall made it appear to be silver which one of us managed to pass off as a 2 shilling coin in the milkbar. Lollies all round.
It is amazing how much mercury was splashed around in industry back in the day! It is an incredible metal, and a lot of fun to play with I'm sure ;-) Ha ha, clever idea with the pennys! Wonder how long it took the shop keeper to cotton on 🤣
we thought it was fun to let it roll around the bench in science class back in the early 70's. the teacher was not impressed.
Without dismissing it's toxicity at all, metallic mercury is relatively innocuous for casual contact - the vapour is very dangerous and the chemistry - especially methyl mercury, one of the first compounds to form when it gets into the environment - is extremely toxic... I totally get why it would be restricted even if you were to consider the metal to be "safe".
If you ever have to clean up a spill, sulphur powder is your friend - it readily coats and reacts with mercury to form inert cinnabar.
Of course, having access to sulphur powder is probably as likely as having access to hazmat teams...
True indeed, the childhood memory of many older people of playing with mercury, often at school, probably did them no harm at all. The vapour concerns me as does methyl mercury, I've been taking samples off various parts of my property here to test for that.
For the once or twice a year that bottle of mercury is out of it's storage there is a spill kit containing sulphur powder for just that reason ;-)
Sounds a bit odd that the limit for personal possession is 0.1g. Jaycar sells mercury tilt switches to the general public which have about 0.5g mercury in each switch for $3.60 each. (I do some amateur chemistry which occasionally involves mercury and I use those tilt switches) Don't worry, I'm very careful with waste ie. convert it to an insoluble salt usually the carbonate, put it with my other heavy metal waste eg nickel in an ice cream tub then add cement. The result is a brick in plastic that I put in general waste to landfill.
Yes I have not looked up that legislation either but as it's a finished product maybe that's why they are OK? Good work on the waste disposal 👍