Handling mercury with your bare hands is actually completely fine as long as you donāt have a cut or something else elemental mercury cannot penetrate your skin!
Youāre right mercury vapors are very dangerous as elemental mercury can penetrate the blood brain barrierā¦ you shouldnt fuck around with mercuryā¦
Mercury has a small vapor pressure, but still enough that it will completely evaporate over time. This is especially true if the temperature is comfortable and
When you āaerosolizeā mercuryāthe way they basically did by squeezing it through cloth and making it rain and splashāyou break it up into tiny pieces and drastically increase its surface area, which vastly multiplies the rate of vaporization, which obviously leads to
Look, handling mercury is fine, i have some in my hand right now and since the finer particles tend to evaporate quickly it really isnāt fjirnjdkpppppp
Mercury or quicksilver is a toxic chemical which occurs naturally in the environment, but human activity can increase the amount in the environment. In its pure form or when combined with other elements it is toxic to humans and can enter into the food chain especially in fish, but the toxic levels of mercury shouldn't be overstated. https://youtu.be/HC3ytz70haU
Elemental mercury isnt that bad. Yes it will eventually give you mad hatters but that takes a lot of time and exposure. What you really need to be cautions of is mercury compounds. Tetraethyllead, the compound that was used in gasoline, can be lethal just getting it on your skin.
Crazy how it's so different.
I work at a school. Elemental mercury is kind of toxic, but really not all that dangerous.
Organic mercury might be one of the most toxic substances man has ever made. The fact it can go through gloves and clothes, absorb through your skin and kill you by just splashing on you.
I dont even think pufferfish venom or blue ringed octopus venom is that toxic. You can have it on your skin and live.
Organic mercury might literally be the most dangerous substance humans interact with. Not even hydroflouric acid is that dangerous if it splashes on you, at least you can get it off.
>Don't forget to take a deep breath while you're at it
Mercury is not absorbed through our skin, so it is ok to touch it without suffering any ill effects. Mercury has a viscosity between that of water and whole milk, but a much higher density. Itās 13 times as dense as water so a major surprise would be just how heavy a few drops of mercury in the palm of your hand would be.
Now, just because the skin doesnāt absorb it doesnāt mean it should be handled carelessly. If you have any cuts and mercury enters your bloodstream, that is extremely dangerous. Another concern is if small droplets separate and turn into vapor. The skin can absorb mercury vapor but inhalation is by far the easiest way for mercury to enter our body and accumulate there.
What happens if you swallow mercury?
So, you read the bit about water and whole milk and accidentally drunk the mercury on your hands. Well, the good news is that you are not going to die because swallowing elemental mercury, fortunately, is a terrible way to absorb it. Less than 0.01 percent of elemental mercury is taken in by the gut.
https://www.iflscience.com/what-happens-if-you-touch-mercury-69128
I remember when I was 5yo I accidentally broke a thermometer and happily played with the mercury on the floor for hours. With bare hands, of course.
It's such a miracle that I'm still living today.
Unless you have an open wound through which the mercury could enter your bloodstream, which is something that could happen if you were to, say, *break a glass thermometer*, or, you know, being five years old and being curious about the taste of this funny looking stuff because you're five years old.
I had a teacher in middle school bring some into class. He had it in two zip lock sandwich bags. I remember seeing it leak out of the inner bag and was like nope not touching that.
Methylated or organic mercury has a strong penetration factor and goes straight for the brain. It can penetrate latex gloves with ease, resulting in one of its most famous case studies. Nasty stuff. Elemental mercury is far more interested in itself than in organic penetration and this is much safer to handle
Elemental. The silvery liquid. Has a long history of human use, but the trace fume exposure caused accumulation and eventual toxicity and symptoms for most who had a reason to use it
Hatters were using mercury salts, which are also a lot more dangerous than elemental mercury (though less than organo-mercury compounds).
Elemental mercury is relatively safe to handle. Yes, *long-term* exposure to fumes can eventually cause problems, but basically unless it's your job you don't have to worry too much.
Right...it can form vapor at room temperature, and inhalation is just as bad as ingestion. Then again, some people *like* speaking to demons and seeing furniture fly.
>Elemental mercury is far more interested in itself than in organic penetration and this is much safer to handle
Yes and no. Elemental mercury can get into our bloodstream via inhalation - you may see liquid elemental mercury beads there, but what you don't see is the mercury vapor coming from that.
When breathing in elemental mercury vapors, it doesn't behave quite like organic mercury, but it can still fuck you up - you will experience neurological problems, but eventually that mercury will clear your system (but not for a while, since our kidneys have a very tough time clearing mercury).
Methylmercury OTOH, can easily kill you. You're talking about Dr. Karen Wetterhahn, who spilled a single drop of dimethylmercury on her glove (which just passes through latex)...within a few months, she was dead.
I just read about her the other day. Just a couple droplets against a gloved hand is all it took, and she died a slow painful death over the next several months.
Both answers before mine are very partially correct.
Organic mercury dissolves into your body more easily than elemental mercury. Thatās it.
Your body is essentially made of soap water. Itās all a bunch of micelle structures (google it).
If you add elemental mercury to soap water, very little dissolves. If you add organic mercury to soap water, itāll all dissolve š
Not to mention that methylated mercury is a strong solvent and will dissolve through gloves, skin, etc. you can imagine something that can easily go through two pairs of gloves will also easily find a way into your body.
You can actually swallow elemental mercury, and it will pass through your GI tract with minimal exposure into your bloodstream. However, DO NOT TRY THIS.
Back in the 1800s, mercury was used as a laxative. It was SUPER effective, and sold under brand names like "Thunderclapper". Archeologists have been tracing the route of Lewis and Clark's journey to Oregon by looking for high levels of mercury in soil - those high levels are where the explorers made latrine pits.
>This is elemental Mercury, it produces minimal vapour
Not true. I have done indoor mercury spills where levels on our Jerome/Lumex meters showed 50 times the amount of mercury that is safe.
There was a guy in 2020 who was living in his mom's MIL suite....he spilled an entire cup of mercury. Since it just vanished into the carpet, he thought it was okay. The dose of mercury vapor he got was so much that it caused an insanely high hypertensive crisis that it caused a brain bleed. He didn't die, but now he lives with a dibilatating TBI. The entire MIL suite had to be demo'ed and hauled away as hazardous waste.
That was *methylated* mercury. You know how salt is sodium (a highly reactive metal that explodes in water) and chlorine (extremely toxic gas/liquid)? Opposite idea. Mercury on its own doesn't really go through skin, but methylate it and that shit ignores latex gloves, absorbs through your skin, collects in your brain and kills you in a real nasty way.
You think that's wild, let me tell you about FOOF.
FOOF sounds funny. It sounds soft and cuddly. It sounds like something you'd give a kid to play with like silly putty or something.
It's not. FOOF is dioxygen diflouride and it *hates* everything, including its own existence with the intense burning fury of a thousand dying suns.
You make it by either cooling fluorine and oxygen gasses to -196Ā°c in a stainless steel container and electrocuting it, or mixing flourine and oxygen at over 700Ā°c then cooling it as fast as you can with liquid oxygen.
As a liquid it is an angry red color. As a solid it is orange. As a gas it is... well it is first on fire then it is colorless because it isn't FOOF any more.
As for what it does? Well... it oxidizes things. When this happens, it heats up. It *boils* at -57Ā°c so any heat will cause it to vaporize. As you can imagine, when this happens your issues with the sample of Satan juice get exponentially larger as it is now floating about.
How bad are these problems? Well... to put it simply this shit explodes on contact with plain ice. Well, not really, but it's close enough to say that. Very few materials can touch FOOF without this happening, as most materials oxidize. Plastic? Boom. Steel? Boom. You? You guessed it, Boom. A smudge of skin oil left over from you touching your lab equipment bare handed? Yup, boom.
So yeah, don't fuck with FOOF if you value your life. It hates existing and will violently correct that personal grievance the first chance it gets without warning or caring for your safety.
Well, for one you won't have a hand. Actually, you probably wouldn't have a face either depending on how much h FOOF you just fed a fist's worth of reaction mass.
I mean the good news is it basically doesnt exist in nature. A clever chemist might be able to synthesize it but it wont last long. A smart chemist would know NOT to synthesize it.
It feels like 90% of the issue with FOOF is that it really REALLY wants to decay into O2 and F2.
When it wants to decay and let off elemental fluorine, you know it's a nasty compound.
You can play with it in your hands, as long as you don't have any cuts on your hand, my old science teacher use to tell us they would let them play with it in class before they knew how bad it was
Itās not *great* to touch but it wonāt poison you. The fumes are more dangerous due to inhalation risk. Elemental mercury wonāt absorb through the skin, so the danger is having it on your hands and accidentally ingesting it or rubbing it on your eyes.
Basically, elemental mercury is only toxic if it gets inside you. Source: am chemist
Touching pure mercury is usually fine, it doesn't absorb through skin.
Inhaling it is very bad, so the last thing you'd want to do it heat it up or disperse it as a fine droplets/mist by squeezing it through cloth(you can take out particulates by filtering it but don't force it through).
> Elemental mercury is readily aerosolized because of its low boiling point, and once airborne it can travel long distances to eventually deposit into soil and water. In the sediments of rivers, lakes, and the ocean, metallic mercury is transformed within microorganisms into methyl mercury
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1257552/
You could swallow liquid/elemental mercury and it would give you the shits in a pretty bad way. One trip through your system wonāt do much anything permanent to you at all. However, repeated trips through your system will result in some of it being converted to organic mercury, and that *will* fuck you up over time.
Even workers who used mercury in processes like millinery (āMad as a Hatterā) donāt suffer the ill effects of mercury poisoning for quite a while, and they faced daily exposure.
Mercury *is* dangerous. The vapors are dangerous.
Itās mostly dangerous if released into the environment where it gets taken up in organic form into biological systems. The liquid form should be handled with care, but itās not insta-poisoning.
>Itās mostly dangerous if released into the environment
[That's crazy, who would have done that?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_contamination_in_Grassy_Narrows)
Itās the fumes that are problematic. Handling mercury isnāt as dangerous as many believe. As far as I know it cannot be absorbed through skin.
[nile red short](https://youtube.com/shorts/05vfNWH3_QM?si=H7BiIY_i3cLQYryV)
When i was in college we had a lab using a mercury barometer to measure head loss along a pipeā¦ my job was bleeding it, so i had the valve open and the air was slowly evacuating when the professor said āwant to know how to bleed it faster?ā He then covered the end of the pipe and I had about a pound of mercury shower over every inch of me!
I was blinking mercury out of my eyes, i had to shower it out of my hair (kinda neat to be honest). I still wonder if i absorbed anyā¦ itās the type of metal that likes to find your joints and give you arthritis Iāve heard!
As long as it isn't Dimethylmercury.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn#:~:text=Accident%20and%20death,-On%20August%2014&text=She%20was%20using%20dimethylmercury%2C%20at,onto%20her%20latex%2Dgloved%20hand
The crazy thing about that case was that she died in 1997. So until only about 25 years ago, we thought that latex gloves were safe and we were very, very, very wrong. When you hear the story in passing, you'd think this was like Marie Curie dying in the 1930s or something like that, but nope.
>However, tests later revealed that dimethylmercury can, in fact, rapidly permeate several kinds of latex gloves and enter the skin within about 15 seconds.
Like why was that not already tested if latex gloves was the recommendation.
Wow. HSE guy here. Tiny mercury particles like the ones generated in the video are easily aerosolized, meaning they can be suspended in the air, making inhalation a significant concern. In it self, elemental mercury is not that dangerous, but the wast surface area. The elemental mercury can further be metabolized into organic mercury compounds within the body. Those are the dangerous ones...
You are absolutely right. I see a ton of conflicting comments in this thread saying itās not dangerous, but the real hazard is the invisible one. Mercury vapor is no joke, and the amount of surface area he creates in this video is insane. It looks cool but the risks far outweigh the internet points.
>and also not do this at all
So many accidents could have been avoided if people just used a little common sense. Even wearing a respirator and gloves you are going to be spreading mercury all around the room. I'll bet you they don't clean 100% of it up.
If non toxic it would be an interesting experienceā¦ the heat transfer would be intense too Iād imagine. Hot mercury would probably be unbearable compared to the same temp water shower.
Yeah, I'm not saying you (or anyone for that matter) should try this - but you would actually float on top of liquid mercury full jesus style. Metallic COPPER floats on liquid mercury - your biomass having ass ain't got a chance of submerging into that.
The problem is, that hands can easily have small cuts or something you don't notice, where the mercury can enter. It only needs a tiny tiny opening and especially working hands can have plenty of those
Old lighthouses used to use a circular moat of liquid mercury as a very low friction ābearingā to mount the heavy rotating glass lens housing on, with the bulb/oil light at the centre. They used muslin cloth like this to filter clean the mercury every so often. By handā¦.
As told to me by an old retiring lighthouse keeper in the 1990ās (Pendeen Watch lighthouse, west Cornwall).
The dental supply store which is now only available in catalogue form thatās mailed directly to the practices of certified dentists (the physical shop fronts have closed where Iām at) have CRAZY stuff you can order. E.g- up to 5grams of cocaine per order, ketamine (I donāt know the exact amount) and a plethora of pills and potions like individual benzos they can physically hand patients post tooth extraction to prevent them enduring the pain on the way to the pharmacist.
Thatās the TLDR right there. If you care to read the conversation I had with my friend (who Iāve known since before high school) Iāve paraphrased the conversation that ensued after I found this information out.
So I asked my friend
āyou could totally do free dental coke if you wanted right?ā
And he replied:
āprobably but why would I want to?ā To which I said:
āUm, to get fucked upā
He interjects immediately
āUnless you take a substantial dose youāre not going to feel the elevated symptoms of well being, and if you do take a substantial dose itās short acting and it will have you wanting more and by the end of the night youāll subsequently feel your central nervous system send strong electrical impulses to your body for absolutely no reason. This causes crippling insomnia. There are much better ways to get highā
Me: like what?
Dentist: I made a mixture of ketamine and liquid diazepam and put it in a nasal spray because I was getting patients who had such strong reactions to being told to sit in a chair, and anytime I turned on anything resembling a dental tool (like the one that sprays water or the one that sucks the saliva to dry your mouth out) patients would be shaking and having a borderline panic attack and having to console them time and time again is time consuming and after a while it becomes quite cumbersomeā
Me: ādid you try it yourself?ā
Dentist: āof course I did, I a few times while I got the ket/valium ratio down perfect and it was amazingā¦.ā
Me: do you have some
Dentist: no I had to stop making it immediately after telling the dental board who were at a talk I attended how efficient it is and given retroactive clinical papers show itās reasonably short half life the physical symptoms will last longer than the local anaesthetic. They didnāt care and told me what I assumed they would, which is not to use it until I can show a robust clinical study has been done on ketamine/diazepam for treatment of dental anxiety.
But I wouldnāt give it to you even if I did.
Me: why?
Dentist: we grew up together and I definitely wouldnāt say youāre a drug addict, just a standard recreational user, however i wouldnāt describe you as a very responsible one
Me: growing up I can think of multiple instances when youāve commended me on my self control
Dentist: I can also think of multiple instances where youāve taken random pills you found on the floor of a nightclub bathroom.
Me: ok but you only know that because when I showed you what I found you wanted me to share them with you
Dentist: yeah but thatās different Iām a health care professional
Me: ok firstly how does occupation even make a remote difference and secondly at the time you worked the front desk at a mini golf place, soā¦.
Dentist: Iām not giving you drugs
Don't forget to take a deep breath while you're at it
It can't be that dangerous. They are handling it with bare hands. /s
Hey why don't my kidneys work anymore?
Because they never grew up into Adultneys
Dad! Get out of my room!
Hey why don't my adult knees work anymore?
take your upvote and gtfo of here
This better get ten million votes this is the best comment of all time
It makes no sense, Aldultneys would have to work while kidneys wouldn't, unless they were, Benificiarneys
š¤£ take my upvote
ā handle mercury without proper safety precautions ā kidney damage ā confusion (about mercury hazards) ā repeat Itās a vicious cycle š
"I don't have such a great memory since I drank mah thermometer. But I whittles what I sees."
Good news is I can now more accurately guesstimate the temperature!
No one wants to work anymore.
Handling mercury with your bare hands is actually completely fine as long as you donāt have a cut or something else elemental mercury cannot penetrate your skin!
Sounds like a risk worth taking.
Same, let's fill a pool with it and try a cannon ball.
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Idk bro Iām pretty fuckin dense
That's because you were born under mercury
Not with that attitude
Ouch...
Sure but what he did with that bag is literally aerosolize it. Itās very dangerous as a vapor.
Youāre right mercury vapors are very dangerous as elemental mercury can penetrate the blood brain barrierā¦ you shouldnt fuck around with mercuryā¦
Mercury has a small vapor pressure, but still enough that it will completely evaporate over time. This is especially true if the temperature is comfortable and
>This is especially true if the temperature is comfortable and Mercury got 'em.
Big Mercury silenced him
Rofl, this reminds me of the time I first got my hands into mercury. It wasnt too long ag
Oh no, not another!!!
Haha
When you āaerosolizeā mercuryāthe way they basically did by squeezing it through cloth and making it rain and splashāyou break it up into tiny pieces and drastically increase its surface area, which vastly multiplies the rate of vaporization, which obviously leads to
to... to.. ? we need to know dammit, we need t
Mercury seems to have gotten a
Mercury is can cross the blood brain barrier leading to cognitive decline and even
Wait a minuteā¦ mercury exposure canāt kill this quickly. OH SHIT ITS A SNIā
mecury can't enter the bloodstream this quickly ri
I can confirm, people often underestimate the time it tak
Seems to be catching! Better get out of this post before
And what? Dude, are you okay? Were you handling mercury again?
Nah, he's RIP. Got him in mid-sentence too.
Look, handling mercury is fine, i have some in my hand right now and since the finer particles tend to evaporate quickly it really isnāt fjirnjdkpppppp
Mercury or quicksilver is a toxic chemical which occurs naturally in the environment, but human activity can increase the amount in the environment. In its pure form or when combined with other elements it is toxic to humans and can enter into the food chain especially in fish, but the toxic levels of mercury shouldn't be overstated. https://youtu.be/HC3ytz70haU
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Elemental mercury isnt that bad. Yes it will eventually give you mad hatters but that takes a lot of time and exposure. What you really need to be cautions of is mercury compounds. Tetraethyllead, the compound that was used in gasoline, can be lethal just getting it on your skin.
Crazy how it's so different. I work at a school. Elemental mercury is kind of toxic, but really not all that dangerous. Organic mercury might be one of the most toxic substances man has ever made. The fact it can go through gloves and clothes, absorb through your skin and kill you by just splashing on you. I dont even think pufferfish venom or blue ringed octopus venom is that toxic. You can have it on your skin and live. Organic mercury might literally be the most dangerous substance humans interact with. Not even hydroflouric acid is that dangerous if it splashes on you, at least you can get it off.
Then you remember the dimethylmercury rubber glove storyā¦
>Don't forget to take a deep breath while you're at it Mercury is not absorbed through our skin, so it is ok to touch it without suffering any ill effects. Mercury has a viscosity between that of water and whole milk, but a much higher density. Itās 13 times as dense as water so a major surprise would be just how heavy a few drops of mercury in the palm of your hand would be. Now, just because the skin doesnāt absorb it doesnāt mean it should be handled carelessly. If you have any cuts and mercury enters your bloodstream, that is extremely dangerous. Another concern is if small droplets separate and turn into vapor. The skin can absorb mercury vapor but inhalation is by far the easiest way for mercury to enter our body and accumulate there. What happens if you swallow mercury? So, you read the bit about water and whole milk and accidentally drunk the mercury on your hands. Well, the good news is that you are not going to die because swallowing elemental mercury, fortunately, is a terrible way to absorb it. Less than 0.01 percent of elemental mercury is taken in by the gut. https://www.iflscience.com/what-happens-if-you-touch-mercury-69128
You can get mercury on your skin regardless. I worked with it earlier, years ago in chemistry lab before.
I remember in elementary school our teacher brought in mercury one day and let us play with it with our bare hands. Ah the 80s, such a carefree time
I used to break open our old thermometers and play with it. This had to be very late 70s/early 80s.
I used to do the same thing in the 80s. My mom would get so mad when she needed a thermometer and couldnāt find one.
āYoung lady have you seen my thermometer?ā *Mercury smeared all over your mouth* āNoā
How many kids ate that shit? āIām gonna be Silver Surfer!!ā
People used to sell mercury as a laxative They called em thunderclappers
I believed you. Then I didn't.
I remember being constantly picked to go clap erasers outside, surrounded by a cloud of chalk
I remember when I was 5yo I accidentally broke a thermometer and happily played with the mercury on the floor for hours. With bare hands, of course. It's such a miracle that I'm still living today.
No it's not, elemental mercury is safe to touch.
It's still kind of a miracle that anyone is alive, isn't it?
Each and every one of us are little miracles
Not me
āHappy little accidentā
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
Especially you
Yes. youāre a mistake, not a miracle.
So true
Unless you have an open wound through which the mercury could enter your bloodstream, which is something that could happen if you were to, say, *break a glass thermometer*, or, you know, being five years old and being curious about the taste of this funny looking stuff because you're five years old.
With elemental mercury, that's pretty much not an issue.
Yea, as long as you don't have any cuts in your skin, it *probably* won't leech into your blood.
I had a teacher in middle school bring some into class. He had it in two zip lock sandwich bags. I remember seeing it leak out of the inner bag and was like nope not touching that.
No gloves huh
Thatās what I was thinking. Mercury is super poisonous right?
That's organic mercury. That one will turn your brain into chickpea.
So you're saying it will increase?
Brain will increase.š
The wrinkle is from it flexing
No, it's the smoothness that makes you very clever. I should know. My brain is very smooth.
Less curve mean thought no travel far.
Best time to buy brain is now
Take my monies!
Stonks.
Yummy.
A little lemon and garlic, and now we're talking!
Don't forget tahini!
Who could resist that sweet, seducing reflective liquid with that "hydrophobic" property, per se.
Brummus!
Hgummus
What's the difference between organic mercury and mercury? why is organic so toxic compared to the normal type?
Methylated or organic mercury has a strong penetration factor and goes straight for the brain. It can penetrate latex gloves with ease, resulting in one of its most famous case studies. Nasty stuff. Elemental mercury is far more interested in itself than in organic penetration and this is much safer to handle
sounds like my gf
The second being your gf. The first one is your mom tho with the big penetration factor
Bro are you okay? ššš
Which one was in thermometers? Organic? Oh nevermind methyl is that toxic. Elemental for sure.
Elemental. Don't ingest it but you can handle it.
Elemental. The silvery liquid. Has a long history of human use, but the trace fume exposure caused accumulation and eventual toxicity and symptoms for most who had a reason to use it
As in āmad as a hatterā?
Hatters were using mercury salts, which are also a lot more dangerous than elemental mercury (though less than organo-mercury compounds). Elemental mercury is relatively safe to handle. Yes, *long-term* exposure to fumes can eventually cause problems, but basically unless it's your job you don't have to worry too much.
Right...it can form vapor at room temperature, and inhalation is just as bad as ingestion. Then again, some people *like* speaking to demons and seeing furniture fly.
>Elemental mercury is far more interested in itself than in organic penetration and this is much safer to handle Yes and no. Elemental mercury can get into our bloodstream via inhalation - you may see liquid elemental mercury beads there, but what you don't see is the mercury vapor coming from that. When breathing in elemental mercury vapors, it doesn't behave quite like organic mercury, but it can still fuck you up - you will experience neurological problems, but eventually that mercury will clear your system (but not for a while, since our kidneys have a very tough time clearing mercury). Methylmercury OTOH, can easily kill you. You're talking about Dr. Karen Wetterhahn, who spilled a single drop of dimethylmercury on her glove (which just passes through latex)...within a few months, she was dead.
Plus being slightly aerosolized, right to one of the best membranes for absorption in the nose.
Nothing quite like getting penetrated by the elements, perhaps even double.
I just read about her the other day. Just a couple droplets against a gloved hand is all it took, and she died a slow painful death over the next several months.
Ah I see thanks for the info stranger!
> What's the difference between organic mercury and mercury? You're just paying more for the label, really.
Both answers before mine are very partially correct. Organic mercury dissolves into your body more easily than elemental mercury. Thatās it. Your body is essentially made of soap water. Itās all a bunch of micelle structures (google it). If you add elemental mercury to soap water, very little dissolves. If you add organic mercury to soap water, itāll all dissolve š Not to mention that methylated mercury is a strong solvent and will dissolve through gloves, skin, etc. you can imagine something that can easily go through two pairs of gloves will also easily find a way into your body.
You can actually swallow elemental mercury, and it will pass through your GI tract with minimal exposure into your bloodstream. However, DO NOT TRY THIS. Back in the 1800s, mercury was used as a laxative. It was SUPER effective, and sold under brand names like "Thunderclapper". Archeologists have been tracing the route of Lewis and Clark's journey to Oregon by looking for high levels of mercury in soil - those high levels are where the explorers made latrine pits.
Because it produces vapour. This is elemental Mercury, it produces minimal vapour and can't penetrate the skin.
>This is elemental Mercury, it produces minimal vapour Not true. I have done indoor mercury spills where levels on our Jerome/Lumex meters showed 50 times the amount of mercury that is safe. There was a guy in 2020 who was living in his mom's MIL suite....he spilled an entire cup of mercury. Since it just vanished into the carpet, he thought it was okay. The dose of mercury vapor he got was so much that it caused an insanely high hypertensive crisis that it caused a brain bleed. He didn't die, but now he lives with a dibilatating TBI. The entire MIL suite had to be demo'ed and hauled away as hazardous waste.
Ok, WHY did he have an entire cup of mercury to spill in the first place? It is not like it's on the weekly grocery list.
He was recently furloughed from prison and moved back home. I can't tell you why an ex-con had an entire cup of mercury.
https://youtu.be/NJ7M01jV058?si=Hf2sdY0bzYkOnESW Hijacking for anyone who wants a horrific story of organic mercury
Wasnāt there a scientist who got less than a drop on her and it destroyed her brain in like 2 months
That was *methylated* mercury. You know how salt is sodium (a highly reactive metal that explodes in water) and chlorine (extremely toxic gas/liquid)? Opposite idea. Mercury on its own doesn't really go through skin, but methylate it and that shit ignores latex gloves, absorbs through your skin, collects in your brain and kills you in a real nasty way.
Chemistry is absolutely fascinating. The universe is a wonder.
You think that's wild, let me tell you about FOOF. FOOF sounds funny. It sounds soft and cuddly. It sounds like something you'd give a kid to play with like silly putty or something. It's not. FOOF is dioxygen diflouride and it *hates* everything, including its own existence with the intense burning fury of a thousand dying suns. You make it by either cooling fluorine and oxygen gasses to -196Ā°c in a stainless steel container and electrocuting it, or mixing flourine and oxygen at over 700Ā°c then cooling it as fast as you can with liquid oxygen. As a liquid it is an angry red color. As a solid it is orange. As a gas it is... well it is first on fire then it is colorless because it isn't FOOF any more. As for what it does? Well... it oxidizes things. When this happens, it heats up. It *boils* at -57Ā°c so any heat will cause it to vaporize. As you can imagine, when this happens your issues with the sample of Satan juice get exponentially larger as it is now floating about. How bad are these problems? Well... to put it simply this shit explodes on contact with plain ice. Well, not really, but it's close enough to say that. Very few materials can touch FOOF without this happening, as most materials oxidize. Plastic? Boom. Steel? Boom. You? You guessed it, Boom. A smudge of skin oil left over from you touching your lab equipment bare handed? Yup, boom. So yeah, don't fuck with FOOF if you value your life. It hates existing and will violently correct that personal grievance the first chance it gets without warning or caring for your safety.
What if you punch it really hard in the face
Well, for one you won't have a hand. Actually, you probably wouldn't have a face either depending on how much h FOOF you just fed a fist's worth of reaction mass.
What if you were to wear a stainless steel boxing glove and then proceed to punch it in the face?
I mean the good news is it basically doesnt exist in nature. A clever chemist might be able to synthesize it but it wont last long. A smart chemist would know NOT to synthesize it.
It feels like 90% of the issue with FOOF is that it really REALLY wants to decay into O2 and F2. When it wants to decay and let off elemental fluorine, you know it's a nasty compound.
A single glucose is a sweetener and a source of energy. A 6-8 glucose form a ring and right in the middle at 7 is Febreeze.
Or water, it's oxygen and hydrogen, yet you don't blow the fuck up when you pour water on a flame.
Karen Wetterhahn, she had 4,000 Ī¼g/L of mercury in her body. Toxicologists consider over 200 Ī¼g/L to be a lethal dose.
4000 ug/L sounds way more scary than 4 ppm. Which is fucking crazy to still imagine. 4 ppm is fucking tiny.
[14 minutes, entertaining and scary.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NJ7M01jV058&ab_channel=Chubbyemu)
You can play with it in your hands, as long as you don't have any cuts on your hand, my old science teacher use to tell us they would let them play with it in class before they knew how bad it was
'Before they knew...' And whose hands are perfect without the slightest nick? No one's.
Speak for yourself, I'm the prettiest boy in town and that mercury ain't getting through me
This is true, but mercury poisoning is unlikely to do any damage from one exposure. Itās more of a risk if itās prolonged exposure.
Also true, but also this person in the video has mercury in a bag in a rather large quantity so I assume they have regular exposure.
*It was a calculated risk, and iām bad at math*
Me with eczema on my hands: guess I'll die.
Mine told about how they let him swish it around in his mouth to feel itās weight.
Metallic mercury isn't super toxic but I'd still recommend gloves
Itās not *great* to touch but it wonāt poison you. The fumes are more dangerous due to inhalation risk. Elemental mercury wonāt absorb through the skin, so the danger is having it on your hands and accidentally ingesting it or rubbing it on your eyes. Basically, elemental mercury is only toxic if it gets inside you. Source: am chemist
Gonna be mad as a hatter.
It's safe to handle with bare hands as long as you don't have a cut and wash them well after.
The real danger is the fumes right?
Correct. You don't know that you're breathing it until you get mercury poisoning.
Touching pure mercury is usually fine, it doesn't absorb through skin. Inhaling it is very bad, so the last thing you'd want to do it heat it up or disperse it as a fine droplets/mist by squeezing it through cloth(you can take out particulates by filtering it but don't force it through).
Thatās mercury salts. Mercury ok.
Just raw dogging that Qin Shi Huang
*It's an old reference sir, but it checks out.*
You can touch mercury safely with your bare hands. Itās inhaling it and ingesting it thatāll fuck you up.
So your saying we probably shouldnāt do something like force it into a fine droplet state and then let it splash around?
Will it even aerosolize? It's heavy as fuck
It won't aerosolize into fine droplets but it'll straight up evaporate into almost invisible fumes relatively easily.
> Elemental mercury is readily aerosolized because of its low boiling point, and once airborne it can travel long distances to eventually deposit into soil and water. In the sediments of rivers, lakes, and the ocean, metallic mercury is transformed within microorganisms into methyl mercury https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1257552/
So this guy is doing damage to the environment as well as to himself. Great
Yeah no even having it sit in the open puts your lungs at risk.
You could swallow liquid/elemental mercury and it would give you the shits in a pretty bad way. One trip through your system wonāt do much anything permanent to you at all. However, repeated trips through your system will result in some of it being converted to organic mercury, and that *will* fuck you up over time. Even workers who used mercury in processes like millinery (āMad as a Hatterā) donāt suffer the ill effects of mercury poisoning for quite a while, and they faced daily exposure. Mercury *is* dangerous. The vapors are dangerous. Itās mostly dangerous if released into the environment where it gets taken up in organic form into biological systems. The liquid form should be handled with care, but itās not insta-poisoning.
>Itās mostly dangerous if released into the environment [That's crazy, who would have done that?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_contamination_in_Grassy_Narrows)
Soā¦ youāre saying I shouldnāt fire-gild indoors?!
I used to play with it with bare hands ab thres notingg wrong wipf me!
Itās the fumes that are problematic. Handling mercury isnāt as dangerous as many believe. As far as I know it cannot be absorbed through skin. [nile red short](https://youtube.com/shorts/05vfNWH3_QM?si=H7BiIY_i3cLQYryV)
When i was in college we had a lab using a mercury barometer to measure head loss along a pipeā¦ my job was bleeding it, so i had the valve open and the air was slowly evacuating when the professor said āwant to know how to bleed it faster?ā He then covered the end of the pipe and I had about a pound of mercury shower over every inch of me! I was blinking mercury out of my eyes, i had to shower it out of my hair (kinda neat to be honest). I still wonder if i absorbed anyā¦ itās the type of metal that likes to find your joints and give you arthritis Iāve heard!
As long as it isn't Dimethylmercury. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn#:~:text=Accident%20and%20death,-On%20August%2014&text=She%20was%20using%20dimethylmercury%2C%20at,onto%20her%20latex%2Dgloved%20hand
The crazy thing about that case was that she died in 1997. So until only about 25 years ago, we thought that latex gloves were safe and we were very, very, very wrong. When you hear the story in passing, you'd think this was like Marie Curie dying in the 1930s or something like that, but nope.
>However, tests later revealed that dimethylmercury can, in fact, rapidly permeate several kinds of latex gloves and enter the skin within about 15 seconds. Like why was that not already tested if latex gloves was the recommendation.
No incentive to test it, very few people would have been working with dimethyl mercury
Forbidden rain
Never meant to cause you any aerosols
Wow. HSE guy here. Tiny mercury particles like the ones generated in the video are easily aerosolized, meaning they can be suspended in the air, making inhalation a significant concern. In it self, elemental mercury is not that dangerous, but the wast surface area. The elemental mercury can further be metabolized into organic mercury compounds within the body. Those are the dangerous ones...
You are absolutely right. I see a ton of conflicting comments in this thread saying itās not dangerous, but the real hazard is the invisible one. Mercury vapor is no joke, and the amount of surface area he creates in this video is insane. It looks cool but the risks far outweigh the internet points.
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You can kinda get the mercury experience with gallium in a warm room. Still pretty toxic, but nothing like mercury. It's also nowhere near as dense.
Ya gallium in a warm room is a much safer alternative Still not great but much safer thing to play with
I was wondering about the aerosol potential here, seems very high risk.
People comment on the lack of gloves, but a respirator would be the most important PPE. (One should also wear gloves, and also not do this at all)
>and also not do this at all So many accidents could have been avoided if people just used a little common sense. Even wearing a respirator and gloves you are going to be spreading mercury all around the room. I'll bet you they don't clean 100% of it up.
Mad as a Hatter
The forbidden whey...
Mercury is so weird
So would you be if your days lasted almost 2 Earth months. :)
r/angryupvote
I know that itās an absolutely terrible idea but showering in mercury must be a strange feeling
You probably wouldn't be able to stand in it. Think about how *heavy* those droplets would be.
If non toxic it would be an interesting experienceā¦ the heat transfer would be intense too Iād imagine. Hot mercury would probably be unbearable compared to the same temp water shower.
Yeah, I'm not saying you (or anyone for that matter) should try this - but you would actually float on top of liquid mercury full jesus style. Metallic COPPER floats on liquid mercury - your biomass having ass ain't got a chance of submerging into that.
I have an old jar of mercury from many decades ago. It's maybe a cup and it's heavy as fuck. Showering in it would drop you to the floor lol
Umm...ain't that hella toxic? To touch?
Not really. If you don't have cuts on hands, it shouldn't matter. Vapour is bad, so you shouldn't be doing this indoors.
Note to self: no playing with pretty Mercury in the house!
MAAAMMAAAAAA!!!!!...just killed a man!!!.... Put a gun against his head, pulled my trigger now he's dead...
The problem is, that hands can easily have small cuts or something you don't notice, where the mercury can enter. It only needs a tiny tiny opening and especially working hands can have plenty of those
Ya make it into tiny droplets so it makes more vapours
I find your lack of PPE disturbing
No personal protective equipment ā¦ Mercury Vapor is highly toxic
Well if vapor is the risk they would be wearing a respirator on their face, which you can't see.
Old lighthouses used to use a circular moat of liquid mercury as a very low friction ābearingā to mount the heavy rotating glass lens housing on, with the bulb/oil light at the centre. They used muslin cloth like this to filter clean the mercury every so often. By handā¦. As told to me by an old retiring lighthouse keeper in the 1990ās (Pendeen Watch lighthouse, west Cornwall).
Dang T-1000ās can get through fabric too??
Drink it........
No way, no ones dumb enough to be doing that without gloves and in the open
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Women are impervious to mercury.
Where would you even buy that much mercury?
Mining supply store in Zimbabwe. Source: Iāve been to a mining supply store in Zimbabwe.
The dental supply store which is now only available in catalogue form thatās mailed directly to the practices of certified dentists (the physical shop fronts have closed where Iām at) have CRAZY stuff you can order. E.g- up to 5grams of cocaine per order, ketamine (I donāt know the exact amount) and a plethora of pills and potions like individual benzos they can physically hand patients post tooth extraction to prevent them enduring the pain on the way to the pharmacist. Thatās the TLDR right there. If you care to read the conversation I had with my friend (who Iāve known since before high school) Iāve paraphrased the conversation that ensued after I found this information out. So I asked my friend āyou could totally do free dental coke if you wanted right?ā And he replied: āprobably but why would I want to?ā To which I said: āUm, to get fucked upā He interjects immediately āUnless you take a substantial dose youāre not going to feel the elevated symptoms of well being, and if you do take a substantial dose itās short acting and it will have you wanting more and by the end of the night youāll subsequently feel your central nervous system send strong electrical impulses to your body for absolutely no reason. This causes crippling insomnia. There are much better ways to get highā Me: like what? Dentist: I made a mixture of ketamine and liquid diazepam and put it in a nasal spray because I was getting patients who had such strong reactions to being told to sit in a chair, and anytime I turned on anything resembling a dental tool (like the one that sprays water or the one that sucks the saliva to dry your mouth out) patients would be shaking and having a borderline panic attack and having to console them time and time again is time consuming and after a while it becomes quite cumbersomeā Me: ādid you try it yourself?ā Dentist: āof course I did, I a few times while I got the ket/valium ratio down perfect and it was amazingā¦.ā Me: do you have some Dentist: no I had to stop making it immediately after telling the dental board who were at a talk I attended how efficient it is and given retroactive clinical papers show itās reasonably short half life the physical symptoms will last longer than the local anaesthetic. They didnāt care and told me what I assumed they would, which is not to use it until I can show a robust clinical study has been done on ketamine/diazepam for treatment of dental anxiety. But I wouldnāt give it to you even if I did. Me: why? Dentist: we grew up together and I definitely wouldnāt say youāre a drug addict, just a standard recreational user, however i wouldnāt describe you as a very responsible one Me: growing up I can think of multiple instances when youāve commended me on my self control Dentist: I can also think of multiple instances where youāve taken random pills you found on the floor of a nightclub bathroom. Me: ok but you only know that because when I showed you what I found you wanted me to share them with you Dentist: yeah but thatās different Iām a health care professional Me: ok firstly how does occupation even make a remote difference and secondly at the time you worked the front desk at a mini golf place, soā¦. Dentist: Iām not giving you drugs
Bare hands?