The studies here seem to refer to career-long occupational exposure in chloralkali plants, in a process that involves amalgamating the mercury with other elements.
Obviously the word “relatively” is doing a lot of work when I say “relatively safe”, but the whole point is that quicksilver in open air is safer than the kind of exposure associated with health consequences. In the hopes of avoiding the thread becoming about how dangerous the act shown in the video is (because it isn’t, particularly) instead of how awesome floating anvils in mercury is.
I am reminded of the Michelson-Morely ether drift experiment–perhaps the most important failure in physics. The apparatus was floated on a pool of mercury to allow it to be easily rotated and also to isolate it from vibration.
There are plenty of cases in the medical literature of elemental mercury poisoning after short-term exposure. Even small amounts of mercury can be very hazardous if not handled properly- heating it and/or cleaning up with a vacuum cleaner seem to be particularly unwise.
Go check out scientific supply companies some time. You can order all sorts of truly terrifying things, no questions asked. Bring your credit card, though. All the really gnarly stuff is expensive as hell.
Unless I’m misreading it, that study reports only a single death from mercury exposure, and the death was caused by a solid mercury-gold chunk someone was apparently melting in his shed.
15,552 human exposures to elemental mercury … Three patients died, but only one case appeared to be directly related to the exposure. A 60-year-old man developed acute pneumonitis after heating a gold-mercury amalgam in an enclosed space
Again “relatively safe” is not a suggestion that you drink, smoke or fuck it, y’all.
Isaac Newton became erratic in his later years, possibly because of his alchemical experiments with mercury and lead, trying to make gold.
I have a necklace of red beads that belonged to my grandmother. I suspect they are cinnabar (mercury sulfide), not something you would want to wear or even handle today.
Calomel was a popular medicine until the mid 20th century.
Mercury was the standard treatment for syphilis for centuries until the discovery of penicillin.
"My body is injured And sadly disordered All by a young woman My own heart’s delight Oh had she but told me When she disordered me Had she but told me of it at the time I might have got salts Or pills of white mercury But now I’m cut down In the height of my prime"
– The Unfortunate Rake, traditional ballad that later became The Streets Of Laredo
