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While we seem to have gone a long way from children's land locked
sextant, the risks of metallic mercury do seem to have been
exaggerated. A site that tells you more about mercury than you may
wish to know is: http://mysite.du.edu/~jcalvert/phys/mercury.htm

Bill

On Nov 30, 7:31 am, Fred Hebard  wrote:
> This may be related to formation of organic compounds of mercury in
> the sink traps, unlike the story about the parquet floor in the Royal
> College of Science, where less formation might be expected.  Organic
> compounds of mercury are the nasty ones; some are incredibly toxic,
> on the nanogram or picogram level.  I would expect the mad hatters
> also were exposed to organic mercurials, being that they were
> treating hides with them.
>
> On Nov 28, 2007, at 8:06 PM, Robert Eno wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> > Quite a few years ago -- I think it was during a course where we were
> > learning how to lab pack hazardous waste -- we were told a story
> > about the
> > high incidence of minimata disease amongst high school science
> > teachers. The
> > cause?  Broken mercury thermometers and the students' practice of
> > simply
> > dumping the waste mercury down the sink drain. Mercury being a very
> > heavy
> > metal, simply lodged in the sink trap and stayed there for years,
> > slowly
> > volatilizing and dispersing in the science lab. The science teachers,
> > because they spent so much time in the lab, day after day, year
> > after year,
> > suffered a much higher than normal body loading of mercury. Result,
> > short-circuited nervous system.
>
> > Unfortunately I do not have a citation for this story but can
> > probably find
> > one from a colleague.
>
> > Not to dismiss what Geoffrey has written, but in my opinion -- and I
> > regularly deal with hazardous wastes -- mercury is not something to be
> > trifled with, nor would I ever recommend it to anyone for use as an
> > artificial horizon. I may come off sounding like a scared old maid,
> > but the
> > world being what it is nowadays; that is loaded with contaminants
> > of all
> > kinds, why voluntarily expose yourself to even more?
>
> > Robert
>
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Geoffrey Kolbe" 
> > To: 
> > Sent: Wednesday, November 28, 2007 4:08 PM
> > Subject: [NavList 4154] Re: Children's land-locked "Sextant"
>
> >> Gary LaPook wrote:-
>
> >>> With use it develops a dross floating on the surface which can be
> >>> removed by filtering it through a piece of cloth like an old t-
> >>> shirt.
> >>> You have to twist the cloth to force the mercury though the cloth
> >>> and
> >>> it comes though in shiny little balls leaving the dross in the cloth
> >>> which I then dispose of. You should probibly wear gloves when
> >>> handling
> >>> the mercury like this.
>
> >> In the 1960's the old Royal College of Science in London was
> >> pulled down
> >> to
> >> build Imperial College, the British attempt to emulate MIT in the
> >> United
> >> States.
>
> >> The Spectroscopy labs in the RCS had long been plagued with the
> >> problem
> >> that continuum spectra always had absorption lines of mercury on
> >> them. On
> >> taking up the parquet floor in the lab, a veritable lake of
> >> mercury was
> >> found underneath! As far as I know, all the researchers of that
> >> era lived
> >> to a ripe old age, despite working for many years in an
> >> environment where
> >> the mercury vapour in the air was probably at saturation point.
>
> >> Not that I am advocating that we should not take suitable
> >> precautions when
> >> using poisonous substances like mercury - its just that people
> >> somehow
> >> seem
> >> to be more susceptible to such things than they used to be in times
> >> past.... or, at least, that is the perception.
>
> >> Geoffrey Kolbe- Hide quoted text -
>
> - Show quoted text -
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