• kowcop@aussie.zoneEnglish
    0·
    9 months ago

    When I was young my Dad bought me some mercury home from work… I loved how it moved when I shook the bottle and the weight of it.

    When I had my own kids I didn’t want it around, so our local council had set up a event where you could dispose of household liquids like old paints and solvents, so I took it down. When I drove up, the guy asked me what I was disposing of so I said mercury. It was bizarre. I was told to stay in the car and a guy came out of a shed in a full hazmat suit with one of those pairs of metal tongs to retrieve it from me.

    I remember Dad telling me that miners used to collect gold pan tailings in mercury and then of a night they would hollow out a potato and put the mercury in, and then put that in the camp fire… it would burn off the mercury and leave a little ingot of gold.

    • wahming@monyet.ccEnglish
      0·
      9 months ago

      Probably because they didn’t know WHICH type of mercury you had. Organic mercury can kill on touch with a single drop. Best not to take chances.

      • MyNamesNotRobert@lemmynsfw.comEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        Source? I’m not sure who to believe. People on the internet who claim it’s safe enough that you can pick it up or people on the internet who claim kills you if you touch it.

        I’m not going to go swimming in a mercury pool any time soon either way.

        • xkforce@lemmy.worldEnglish
          1·
          9 months ago

          Chemist (and biochemist) here. Organometallic compounds of Mercury are primarily dangerous because Mercury ions bond fairly strongly to soft ligands like sulfhydryl groups found near the active sites of enzymes. This can result in the displacement of the metal ions or otherwise disrupt the structure needed for enzyme functionality. Mercury metal OTOH is considerably less reactive. It is not safe to breathe in for prolonged periods of time but it is no where near as toxic as its organometallic derivatives are. Dimethyl Mercury for example, is extremely dangerous. A single drop has 100+ times the organomercury content needed to kill someone.

      • lad@programming.devEnglish
        1·
        9 months ago

        I had to search for “organic mercury”, it’s dimethylmercury and it doesn’t look like mercury at all. Do people really call it “mercury” or “organic mercury”? It’s on par with pounds as a measure of mass, weight, and force by the amount of confusion, I’d say 🤔

        sad story

        that was in the top of search results about dimethylmercury: Wikipedia excerpt: Karen Elizabeth Wetterhahn (October 16, 1948 – June 8, 1997), also known as Karen Wetterhahn Jennette, was an American professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, New Hampshire, who specialized in toxic metal exposure. She died of mercury poisoning at the age of 48 due to accidental exposure to the extremely toxic organic mercury compound dimethylmercury (Hg(CH3)2). Protective gloves in use at the time of the incident provided insufficient protection, and exposure to only a few drops of the chemical absorbed through the gloves proved to be fatal after less than a year. sad but also a bit ironic fate 🫡 that’s why I prefer not to do dangerous things even when protection and/or safety is in place.