A number of years ago I was involved in the disposal of some plant which had been used with radionucleides, in the course of which I worked with a French engineer who had been involved in a variety of chemical plant using things like tritium, various actinides, and mercury.
He told me that the radioactive stuff was totally unworrying but he used to lose sleep over the mercury. Years later when I had to get insurance on a chemical plant, the first two questions I was asked by the risk assessor were “Will you be using mercury? Will you be using cadmium?”
Given the way it used to be handled casually in schools, it’s a wonder any would be chemists made it to retirement.
Chocolate however…truly a weapon of cocoa mass digestion.
