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[Nickbat]

Read this, and also check the embedded EPA link.

http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/11/50000_to_clean_up_a_2_oz_mercu.html

Don't drop that thermometer! 

I remember playing with mercury as a kid in the chemistry lab. 

[bertiecbx550]

i broke 1 in a cup of tea when i was a kid and then drank the tea.....I wonder if thats why i`m thick?

[Tony H]

Jeesus! when we were kids my mates big brother used to collect mercury in a large coffee jar it was almost full and must have weiged about ten pounds imagine the clean up costs nowadays if he had have dropped it on the floor

[CaptainZok]

You couldn't make it up could you.
How the hell did we survive before these elf & safetee muppets were around to protect us from ourselves.

[Dishevelled Den]

Yep it was bound to happen, a case of collective arse-covering in all its - 'concern for the safety of the environment and those who inhabit it' - glory.

What a lot of balls!

[Debs.]

I`ve got >1Kg. of Hg in a glass jar out in the workshop.....

.....surely, enough to turn everyone on earth into a blithering idiot! (apparently!)

[Kevin Wood]

I remember playing with mercury as a kid in the chemistry lab. 

I was playing with a mercury arc rectifier a couple of weeks back. I wonder what the fallout would be from one of those going pop? Must have been about 1/2 a pint of mercury in that.

Kevin

[cruisetopoland]

I remember breaking open thermometers as a kid and playing with the contents, and I turned out alri........

Explains it all 

[jereboam]

Mercury as a liquid metal is not really dangerous, as it isn't easily absorbed.  Mercury vapour is highly toxic and can be inhaled.  It's sometimes released during attempts to clear up spilt liquid mercury.  Many mercury compounds are soluble and thus easily absorbed by the body. 

Mercury used to be used in the manufacture of felt used for hats.  Mercury poisoning often affected workers in the industry, giving rise to symptoms which gave rise to the expression "mad as a hatter".

Many years ago, when I was at school, we used to have an annual camping trip, accompanied by the school staff.  Naturally, first aid equipment was taken with.  One year, a group which obviously did not include any science teachers, decided to sterilise the thermometers in the first aid kit by boiling them...

[Chris_H]

Ah yes.  Then there were the 'maze' toys where children were encouraged to navigate a blob (or several blobs if  shaken) of mercury round a maze sealed in some sort of early acrylic casing.  After use you would probably throw the toy into a toy box (or leave it on the tea-table where a hot dish of sheperd's pie would be placed on it)!

[PhilRich]

We shouldn't be too surprised, the lunatics have been running the asylum for quite a while now

[Kevin Wood]

The EPA report states the amount of mercury was 2 teaspoons. An ounce is 6 teaspoons.  (Who knew? I thought a teaspoon equaled an ounce. Do not eat anything I have cooked from a recipe.) So the actual amount of spilled mercury was less than one ounce.

PMSL. Got to love the septics and their mad systems of weights and measures. How did they put a man on the moon with science like that?

Shall we tell them that mercury is about 12 or 13 times as dense as water so weighing it with a teaspoon using culinary methods isn't that sensible anyway?

Kevin

[Omegadoha, Desert Member]

A friend of mine decided to stick a mercury thermometer in a bunsen burner flame. But he got caught by the teacher and chucked out before anything exploded.