Maybe it was from a bunch of these things.
Posted on 02/07/2018 12:19:05 AM PST by Zakeet
Scientists have uncovered another hidden threat buried in the icy frozen north—massive natural reserves of mercury, a toxic heavy metal that in some forms can build up in fish and other animals and cause serious health problems in humans.
A study published Monday in the journal Geophysical Research Letters reports that the amount of natural mercury bound up in Arctic permafrost may be 10 times greater than all the mercury humans have pumped into the atmosphere from coal-burning and other pollution sources over the last 30 years. As climate change warms the land, this thawing permafrost could release significant quantities of mercury back into the environment, potentially allowing far more of the pollutant to build up in the atmosphere and the food web.
[Snip]
Put another way, says lead author Paul Schuster, a U.S. Geological Survey hydrologist, "This is a complete game-changer for mercury. It's a natural source, but some of it will be released through what we're doing with climate change."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.nationalgeographic.com ...
I thought there were more...
GOD, we had a fun childhood, eh ?
All these words and nothing about what form the mercury has. Is it the sulfide, which is quite resistant to decomposition? Might it be desirable to mine mercury from thawing permafrost? Will permafrost ever thaw at all or will a natural ice age overtake our weak (if any) warming, leaving it frozen?
While mercury, a liquid under normal earth surface temperatures, does have something called “vapor pressure”, in which a certain proportion of a liquid is converted to gaseous form, it also has a VERY high molecular weight, much greater than that of most other components of atmospheric gases. So any mercury that volatilizes would remain very close to the surface, not rising much if at all above ankle level in a calm atmosphere. Air current COULD carry it much higher, but the mercury vapor quickly falls back to lower levels.
Much like the hazard posed by radon gas, which has a similar molecular weight, the danger is actually relatively small, with mercury vapor (which is NOT radioactive) posing a far smaller threat to life than radon.
I thought about the penny mercury thing back then but found a better use for it one that went boom or was supposed to. However, I got my stupids from chewing on the old style lead toothpaste tubes - tasty!
But no one complains about the 100 million tons of mercury that china dumps in the ocean every year.
Our baby beds were painted with lead paint too, I didn’t die. I did the same thing with the mercury and the coins.
Not too long ago I read about a local school being evacuated because someone dropped and broke a thermometer. They had to call HAZMAT and the school was closed all day.
How did we survive?
mercury’s natural antidote is DDT, riding your bike in the cloud produced by the DDT fogging truck saved all of us.
Mercury is good for us. Isn’t that why the government put it in the fish we eat?/s
There is a “medicine” they used to use in Andrew Jackson’s day (he apparently took it) called “calomel” that was a mercury compound. Shudder
The biggest us of Mercury up until the eighties or nineties, was the amalgam used to fill cavities in teeth. Most people over 40 have it in there teeth today.
AN INCONVENIENT AL GORE EXAGGERATION:
‘By 2010 lower Manhattan in NY City, the Florida coast and Pacific islands will be under water.’
They are always looking for scary scenarios to hype so as to keep the folks anxious about the future, so they can pretend to give us solutions for the problems that don’t exist.
Don’t forget The Blob! Won’t stay frozen if the Artic warms!
AHH NO
I fashioned a toxic thermostat out of it that keeps my toxic masculinity at a comfortable 98.6.
You'd think they'd be celebrating.
Why the hell did we import it all from Mercury in the first place?
Maybe it was from a bunch of these things.
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