There is a significant difference between methylmercury, ethylmercury, and metallic mercury. Further, as Cody points out, there is a serious difference between metallic mercury that is swallowed and mercury vapor absorbed through the lungs.
Take a closer look than just a cursory reading of the Wiki page.
That’s how at least a couple people died.
Lead Acetate is the lead compound that tastes sweet- Possibly the first artificial sweetener that there should have been a health scare about.
Huge differences with which I am very very familiar. Just because metallic mercury is not the worst possible neurotoxin to put into your body does not make it a good idea. Neurotoxins are, as whole, best avoided as best one is able. Intentional exposure is dumb.
I agree absolutely. And I think Cody has gone a bit self-destructive since he lost his girlfriend and dropped out of his degree program. Still, the point he is making is a good one. Subtle chemical differences can yield large differences in toxicity.
And I have had all my amalgam fillings replaced since the data on leaching came out a few decades ago.
ETA:
Francium is technically only liquid because – if it could be isolated in appropriate quantities – the heat of its radioactive decay would be sufficient to raise its temperature above its intrinsic melting point. And of course being in the same period as sodium and potassium and friends would make it hella reactive. So, really bad idea.
I was going to stick up for Beryllium; because anything that used to be called “glucinium” is probably pretty sweet; but then I realized that it isn’t a transition metal.
This is an irresponsible thing to put in an educational video and he shouldn’t have done it – all the more so because he does take care over safety in other videos.
In real life, I’d be more cavalier about safety – we’re all going to die of something and it’s hard to engage with science if you’re just scared the whole time – but you don’t know how people will respond to a video, and there are for sure ways to make yourself and others very sick with mercury.
Same group, different row (period)
Gah, reading this was like slow deja-vu. Like you are reality-adjacent alt me. Vivid multi-sensory flashback to the frustrating process/experience of trying to pluck wily bloblets from between thick, droopy tufts of orange shag carpeting…
Up to the “I never put mercury in my mouth” part, anyway. This is apparently the point at which our timelines diverge.
Tastes like heavy nothing.
What’s the difference between a rectal thermometer and an oral thermometer?
The taste.
/try the veal /tip your waitress
I’ve read that, radioactivity aside, you can estimate that francium would melt on a warm day, say around 27 C, so definitely liquid at body temperature. I.e., only a degree or two below cesium.
I mean, who wouldn’t?
He will be.
Turns out I watched this the same week I learned that people used to get high off of arsenic.
devoid of transparency
I read in book title something like…
china land of invention
…that the salad leaf of purslane absorbs
mercury from where it grows
Yep. But I stick with my original comment. The Romans used to hang a ball of lead into cheap white wine to make it more ike the posh stuff that the upper ranks could afford to import from Spain. Cider brewers used to do the same within living memory (presumably the memory of those who didn’t drink the stuff. Lead lined containers were used to store lemonade and sauerkraut, and George III was very fond of both. In all these cases it was the metal in contact with something else that produced the sweetness.
However, there are people who have swallowed molten lead and lived. Not for long, but Henry Hall was 94…
He explains it here 
disappointing lack of 90s big-beat fans on here:
