During science class in the 1980's, my friends and I used to take mercury out of the vials and play with it on our desks. Inevitably, it would end up all over the place. I recall one kid who poured some in his jacket pocket to take home.
Fortunately, if a drop of mercury is spilled now days, the school is shut down for days while a HAZMAT team cleans the place up.
My brother coated his high school ring with mercury. He wore it like that for a few weeks.
I worked in a lab and stopped ordering mercury thermometers and ordered metal one which weren't as good; because it was a pain when the hazmat crew showed up everythime a thermometer was broken.
i didnt. but my parents used to pour mercury on their desks and push it around with a magnet. they would also run through the mosquito spray
I remember my Jr High science teacher once had us clear the desks to make a row down the center of the room. Then he pushed some Mercury off the end of his lecture desk and it literally bounced down the length of the classroom. We thought that was so cool.
In the 1970's my brother had a large glass container filled with mercury. We used our bare hands to disperse and capture the elusive mercury balls. We used to take my father's gasoline tank down into the woods to light mini bon-fires and ignite other pyrotechnical concoctions. I remember throwing a fist full of mercury into one of the fires. Mercury poisoning, my a**!
Yep - many times. My old man had a bottle of it for what, I don't know. We used to dump out on the table, cut it, roll it, etc...I don't think it f***ed me up, but then again, I am posting on LR.com.
Similar experience as one of the previous posters. Our dad had (ironically) an old baby-food jar with mercury in it among his hunting and fishing supplies. We would take it out and play with it, as others described.
He also had lead, which he would melt in a tuna can and pour into molds to make or add weight to fishing lures. And, as bad or worse, he had shotgun shell and bullet reloading supplies. Guess we were among the rare cases that 1) listened to our dad's warnings and didn't touch that dangerous stuff and 2) thought guns were a tool to be used with great care, not things to show our machismo or place in the pecking order.
yyyyyyyyyEEEEEEESsss butttt itttttttttttt neeeeeeeverrrrr HHHHHHHHHHHHHHurrrrrrrrrrrrrrt meeeeeeee aaaaaaaaaaanyyyyy
You know Dain Bramage was the name of Dave Grohl's pre-Nirvana band? Their ex-bassist showed me a vinyl copy of their record once. Don't know if mercury was involved.
Mercury isn't really that poisonous, especially when you are only exposed to it briefly. Your body is quite good at eliminating it. The reason they call in the HAZMAT teams when it gets spilled is because the mercury will seep into the floor or carpet and slowly vaporize over a period of months or years, and it is that low-level, long-term exposure that causes brain damage, birth defects, and other no-good very bad stuff. There's a great picture from the 70s of a guy sitting ON a giant pool of mercury (it's so dense that you can sit on top like a leaf sits on water). Like I said, he's probably fine. It's the chronic exposure (like the "mad hatters," who worked with mercury every day for years) that gets you.
Chemist by trade wrote:
Mercury isn't really that poisonous, especially when you are only exposed to it briefly. Your body is quite good at eliminating it. The reason they call in the HAZMAT teams when it gets spilled is because the mercury will seep into the floor or carpet and slowly vaporize over a period of months or years, and it is that low-level, long-term exposure that causes brain damage, birth defects, and other no-good very bad stuff. There's a great picture from the 70s of a guy sitting ON a giant pool of mercury (it's so dense that you can sit on top like a leaf sits on water). Like I said, he's probably fine. It's the chronic exposure (like the "mad hatters," who worked with mercury every day for years) that gets you.
Jeff, aka, the real drool sucking, asian whore bitch, definitely used to drink this stuff. Somehow he poisoned enough people on this board to think he actually had some point.
My buddy and I used to steal the mercury from the science class, fill it up in syringes and shoot it up our veins.
Man, we would get the most unbelievable high, even better than crack. It probably wasn't good for us though.
Don't try this at home wrote:
My buddy and I used to steal the mercury from the science class, fill it up in syringes and shoot it up our veins.
Man, we would get the most unbelievable high, even better than crack. It probably wasn't good for us though.
I'm pretty sure shooting mercury would make you dead. I heard of a guy who shoved thermometers up his ass for fun and they broke one time and he died from mercury poisoning seeping into the cuts in his anus. Mercury isn't that harmful if it's just exposed to the skin, but don't let it into your blood or it could kill you.
Sure but... the real fun was with Sodium.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JD85OUkEKKw
We used to steal it from science class and toss it in puddles in the street... among other things.
Ventolin? Ventolin? Veeeeeentoooliiiiinnnnn...
Mercury is used in some Indian traditional medications- here's an x-ray of someone who was using it:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMicm050190#figure=f1
And although injecting it likely won't kill you, it doesn't do good things:
http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMicm040265#figure=f1
I too remember playing with balls of it on the neighbors old farm when I was a kid- seem to have survived. The chemist is correct- long term exposure (or stupid things like ingestion or injection) are the issue.
