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Posted on 10/10/2003 4:01:42 PM PDT by HarleyD
WASHINGTON -- Nobody is showing signs of being sick from the mercury that was spilled last week at Ballou High School in Southeast. But just how dangerous is the chemical if exposed to a certain amount?
Fifty-five micrograms per-cubic-meter is the concentration of mercury vapors found in the first home evacuated earlier this week. A worker exposed to that concentration eight hours a day, five days a week, for twenty years would hardly be affected.
That according to Dr. Tom Clarkson of the Department of Environmental Medicine at the University of Rochester.
"What we see today are hardly detectable effects either in terms of tests you carry out on the nervous system or tests you carry out on the kidneys."
However, Clarkson says the clean-up is important.
The Department of Health's Dr. Michael Richardson says about 48 residences have been examined so far, and no one has shown signs of mercury poisoning. An apartment building in Southeast D.C. is now part of the mercury cleanup.
The building is one of five where elevated levels of mercury have been discovered since a vial of mercury was removed from a chemistry lab nine days ago.
Ballou remains closed, and students are attending classes at Hart Middle School at the old D.C. Convention Center downtown.
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Nah, the only confirmed long-term effect is a distinct tendency to become addicted to certain web sites. :=)
BTW, I have a 5 lb. bottle of the stuff. I used to float lead bullets in it. Fun. Now I'm scared to touch it, even though I've got it in my teeth. Ah, the callousness of youth.
I would take a Silver Quarter & put a bead of mercury on it. Then, rub it in between my finger & thumb. The mercury would meld into the silver & make it shine as if it were chrome plated. The quarter would shine like the mercury. A day or two later, the quarter would turn cloudy & you would have to use more mercury to make it shine again.
I wonder if I should declare my bathroom off limits? I have a thermometer in my drug cabinet. Only asperin of course!
Metallic mercury is not a risk – it used to be given as mercury swallows with out any correlated disease. The oxides can be toxic and are used as topical antibiotics.
The relative risk is way way way out of whack here. I bet they could have measured some chlorine gas in the air also. It is quite easy to clean up by sprinkling sulfur and sweeping. Heating it to a high temp produces air born gasses that should be avoided.
This country has become a nation of chemophobes due to our “read and parrot” public school system that confuses science with watching nature films. Real science requires real math – for math is the language of science. 55 micrograms/cubic meter is the same a 55 fermento grams / cc. Sounds a lot worse if you use the cu meter unit? But then this is one part in about 4 x 10E –12 or at a level so low that it is very hard to get an accurate measurement in a lab setting much less a field sample.
What is the motivation of this distortion of reality? Follow the money - The Asbestos scam was first (not shown to be any more dangerous than fiberglass dust), Now Mercury, next lead (different than lead oxide), teflon outgassing, and soon everything will cost more as this country of Chemophobes tries to sue itself into prosperity.
They have a point, we should just family sing fests in the evening...no TV.
Me too, every chance I got. Fascinating stuff. My dad was a pharmacist and used to bring it home in a little pill bottle, sometimes, for me to play with; don't know where he got it. He just said don't handle it "too much". (Perhaps he was trying to get rid of me.....)
They found a tiny ammount of mercury on a bus and in a few houses. SO WHAT! One could probably achieve the same by simply breaking open a household glass thermometer or dismantling a mercury thermostat. And guess what - as long as you aren't drinking the stuff or trying to smear it all over your face it is practically harmless. I remember having one of those little "quicksilver" maze toys as a child. It was a plastic maze with a drop of mercury in it that you tried to get to the center by turning it - and they sold them at toystores all over the nation without even a second thought. Nowadays somebody simply touches so much as a drop of the stuff and they shut down the school for a month!
The paper today said they found some more of it outside RFK stadium. It was described as the size of a pea (i.e. a single drop) and was in a sealed vial...yet they called in an EPA haz-mat team to do a chemical spill cleanup! As if they couldn't just pick the stuff up and drop it off at chemical disposal or even chunk it in the nearest dumpster! No - they have to come in with the guys in chemical suits and treat it as if they've found a missing case of uranium. This is truly the death of common sense.
LOL! I drew the line at eating the stuff!
Sounds like a neat science demonstration. I remember when I was in 2nd or 3rd grade and they had a few drops of it in a plastic ziplock bag. They passed it around the room and let us play with it while explaining that it was the stuff that made thermometers work. But those were also the days when half the class brought toy Davy Crockett rifles and coonskin hats to school for Texas History Day when we all dressed up as famous historical figures. Have your kid try that today and they'll send em to an "alternative school" for children with "violent" tendencies.
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