>Someone recently asked on OM digest #2505:
>"Should mercury (being so toxic) be stored so close to food items?"
> Who says it's toxic, and toxic to whom? (:-))
> The Hg cells are perfectly safe with your food in the reefer. After
>all, Hg has been perfectly safe in dental fillings, thermometers,
>merthiolate, and as a perversative (oops, I meant preservative) in
>contact lens solutions, and virtually every vaccine known to man (check
>your flu shot for thimersol!) for countless decades, and in some cases
>centuries. Never mind that you can't hardly buy an Hg thermometer,
>merthiolate, or contact lens solutions containing Hg anymore. But if
>it's safe enough to shoot into your body directly, it must pass muster
>somewhere. :-)
> Regards, David Duff (who has degrees in Biology, Education, and
>Photography, and is willing to sell his credentials and conscience to
>the highest-paying desperate Hg peddler to keep himself in OM gear.)
>:-)
Like most heavy metals, mercury is extraordinarily persistent and
accumulative in the body and relatively small amounts accumulated cause
'Mad hatter' effects. The concern was not so much with workers in the
battery manufacturing business - after all, the risks could be engineered
out of production or, more cost effectively, moved to a third world nation.
The problem was in the fish which accumulated mercury very effectively from
run-off/leachate, biomagnifying it up the food chain until it reached us.
Shark OVER a certain size is still restricted from sale here in Victoria
as it is old enough to have accumulated enough mercury to be a health
hazard and, as sharks are technically boneless, the metal is more likely to
accumulate in the tissues. (We used to eat a lot of shark here). The
problem was so serious that an effort was made to restrict the use of
mercury in any process where it could escape to environment. The number of
battery cells discarded every year in industrialised societies is
absolutely enormous and so, they were a target for change. (See Eugene
Smith's photo-essay Minimata for the effects of the heavy metal Cadmium and
fisheries).
The last time a student broke a mercury thermometer at my workplace, the
clean-up protocols were so stringent and lengthy that the school
immediately replaced all of them with alcohol based thermometers. I'm no
chemist but I assume that some mercury based compounds are perfectly safe
as the metal is effectively locked in to the molecular structure - after
all, both sodium and chlorine are very nasty materials but we wouldn't live
long deprived of sodium chloride.
AndrewF
M.Env.Sci.
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