Subject: Re: Mercury

From: [email-masked] (Dominion)
Date: Thu, 01 Feb 2001 10:27:49 GMT

On Wed, 31 Jan 2001 19:15:52 -0500, "Brian" <[email-masked]> wrote:

>Hey there everyone!  I was just talking about mercury poisioning today.  I
>understand that it's now ill-advised to eat any big fish because of mercury
>accumulation when I got to thinking...I understand that the mercury from one
>thermometer can pollute a small lake (anybody know if this is true?)
>Anyway...Mercury is an element.  It's can't be manufactured.  So where does
>it come from?  They had mercury to cure hats with 150 years ago...is it
>mined somewhere?Where is it found "in the wild"?

http://www.epa.gov/mercury/

Will give you more information than you probably wanted.

HTH

---
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From: [email-masked]
Date: Fri, 02 Feb 2001 01:51:41 GMT

In article
<[email-masked]>,
> Will give you more information than you probably wanted.

Yep!  And de Gov. has more specific info at:

http://sflwww.er.usgs.gov/metadata/sflwww/metkrabb.sgm

http://sofia.usgs.gov/publications/fs/166-96/foodchain.html

http://ehpnet1.niehs.nih.gov/child1998/full/Suppl-3/841-847myers/myers-
full.html

And From Mich:

http://www.mesb.org/ftp/hg/hg-1016.txt

Sent via Deja.com
http://www.deja.com/

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From: "Dean Knight" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 13:26:00 +0800

Mercury is attached to silver in minute amounts and is extracted whilst
melting the silver to bullion

"Brian" <[email-masked]> wrote in message
news:[email-masked]...

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From: "Andrew McLaren" <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 5 Feb 2001 23:27:39 +1100

"Brian" <[email-masked]> wrote
> mined somewhere?Where is it found "in the wild"?

Ah, this has got to be a trawl, right?  Mercury is an element and so is
Hydrogen, Helium, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Silicon etc. But there's no mystery
about where they come from, or how we obtain them in their pure form!

Anyway ... mercury occurs in the Earth's crust in the form of the mineral
cinnabar, which is Mercury Sulphide, HgS. Cinnabar deposits are rare - the
deposits in Spain account for 1/3 of world production. After mining, you
heat the cinnabar to say, 600 degrees C in an oxidizing furnace ... the
sulphur combines with oxygen to form sulphur dioxide, and you're left with
nearly pure Mercury.

Lots of heavy metals can potentially contaminate water and thus form an
environmantal hazard for humans and other organisms. Lead has been polluting
our water since classical times (lead plumbing very popular from Roman times
to early this century ... in fact the word "plumbing" comes from Latin
"Plumbum" meaning Lead. Cadmium is a more recent danger.

Mercury *is* dangerous in the Methyl form ... but how much gets into your
dietary cycle would depend on where you live, where your food and water
comes from, and in many cases be dwarfed to insignificance by the multitude
of other environmental hazards that might fry your brain or your liver (or
your spleen, or your kidneys, or your ...). Generally I don't agonise about
tucking into a big slab of juicy fish (unless it's from Minimata). Mercury
is readily absorded through respiration and through the skin (ie unbroken
skin, no leision required) as well as ingestion. Since the human body has no
way to eliminate mercury, it just builds up and builds up until you die.

Still, it's good to think about these issues ...

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From: Graham Cowan <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 05 Feb 2001 09:04:47 -0500

Andrew McLaren wrote:

> ... the human body has no way to eliminate mercury,
> it just builds up and builds up until you die.

Is that right?

> Still, it's good to think about these issues ...

At greater length, perhaps.

---
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like gasoline but better, for cars like today's but better.
http://www.eagle.ca/~gcowan/boron_blast.html

---

From: Larry Fairbanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 19:18:38 GMT

Actually, that was dimethyl mercury.  Both are known, and one is a lot more toxic than the other, I believe it is the dimethyl form.

With the latency and accumulation period in addition to the fact that the damage from mercury is in the early stages of fetal development, it becomes easy to see that pregnant women should not be told to quit eating fish.  By the time they find out they are pregnant, it is already too late.  It is true that you would need to eat a lot of Lake Erie fish to come close to the toxic limit.

For more info, see:
http://home.columbus.rr.com/lfairban/Pages/Mercbook.html

John McCarthy wrote:

> "Brian" <[email-masked]> writes:
>
> > accumulation when I got to thinking... <Snip >
> >
> Mercury is mined.  Brian has heard an exaggerated rumor.  The warning
> was much more restricted, perhaps to pregnant women, and then the were
> only warned not to eat too much fish.
>
> The recent restrictions on the use of mercury are to eliminate small
> hazards.  When I was in high school around 1940, we were allowed to
> make experiments with liquid mercury and to handle it.  I haven't
> heard of this leading to identifiable harm.
>
> While metallic mercury can be swallowed without important harm, methyl
> mercury (Is it Hg(CH3)2 ?) is extremely poisonous.  The Minimata
> tragedy in Japan was caused by an industrial plant releasing
> substantial amounts of methyl mercury into Minimata Bay which made
> shellfish poisonous.  A chemist at Dartmouth college died when it
> turned out that the latex gloves she was using to handle methyl
> mercury were permeable and let the methyl mercury reach her hands.
>
> There is mercury in many dental fillings, and while harm from it is
> suspected, no actual case of harm has been identified.
>
> Mercury is present naturally in the ocean, 60 million tons of it.
> This corresponds to 20,000 years of present world production of 3,000
> tons per year.
>
> --
> John McCarthy, Computer Science Department, Stanford, CA 94305
> http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/
> He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.

--

Larry Fairbanks
1210 Mulford Rd.
Grandview Heights, Ohio  43212-3508
(614) 297-0036

Home Page - Road Runner
http://home.columbus.rr.com/lfairban/homepage.html

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From: Larry Fairbanks <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 21 Feb 2001 19:28:24 GMT

For more information about Mercury, see: http://home.columbus.rr.com/lfairban/Pages/Mercbook.html

--

Larry Fairbanks
1210 Mulford Rd.

Home Page - Road Runner