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My dad had a little brown bottle of mercury too when I was a kid. I remember the bottle being really heavy. My sister and I would pour little blobs in our hands and let it roll around and if it fell to the floor it would break into a hundred little blobs. I wonder if there are any long term affects, we played with it probably 8 times; my dad was even a science teacher and no one knew it was bad for us.
My dad had a little brown bottle of mercury too when I was a kid. I remember the bottle being really heavy. My sister and I would pour little blobs in our hands and let it roll around and if it fell to the floor it would break into a hundred little blobs. I wonder if there are any long term affects, we played with it probably 8 times; my dad was even a science teacher and no one knew it was bad for us.
Quicksilver is not really dangerous unless you breath it.
Wow, this is wierd, I never ran across anyone else that played with mercury as a child. I am almost 56 and in grade school someone in my class would get mercury out of thermometers and we would keep it in our desk and play with it each day at school like a pet.
I remember all that also, how heavy the mercury bottles were, how much fun it was playing with it rolling it back and forth, trying to catch it when it dropped, also from broken thermometers (funny how they used to break all the time), rubbing it on pennies and such.
Kids just aren't allowed to have any fun these days.
The tuna thing really sucks though. Wonder why the tuna are affected more than the other fish?
My high school chemistry teacher passed mercury around the laboratory for students to see and conduct some lab experiments. As a bonus we handled the stuff with bare hands and got excited when it split into small bits and pieces.
Last edited by initially; 06-18-2009 at 11:26 PM..
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I played with mercury also as a kid.. it poured out of the sink in our science lab at hesperia high school (1989-or there about), shortly afterwards I started getting bad migraines and still to this day I get migraines so bad I cannot work, was it caused by the mercury? my friend and I would throw it at eachother and pick it up and play with it. We did this for about two weeks.. I allways passed my migraines off as part of a heart condition I have, but no doctor can confirm the two being related.
My 7th grade teacher passed a wine glass around the class with mercury in it, and told us to dip our fingers in it. It was so cool. But, geez. So bad for you. The reason it's in tuna is it gets concentrated the higher you go up the food chain, and tuna are top predators in the ocean. Anyway, I'm more concerned about what I got exposed to in the plant pathology laboratory I worked at in college. Benzene, acetone - even with sterile hoods, blech.
Anyway, I'm more concerned about what I got exposed to in the plant pathology laboratory I worked at in college. Benzene, acetone - even with sterile hoods, blech.
I suggest you tell your family Dr to test your blood to make sure you don't end up with AML Leukemia. I'd also read about it and learn the symptoms. 14% chance of survival when my dad was diagnosed, I think 4 months to live without treatment.
Wow! So funny to read these comments. My 7th grade science teacher also passed it around for everyone to handle.
One of my first jobs was as a laboratory assistant in a state OSHA lab. We handled asbestos samples, a lot of different chemicals (benzene, acetone, etc.), all kinds of things. I was terrible at that job (my friends called me Beaker - from the Muppets?). More than once I remember my supervisor running toward me waving her hands and yelling to stop what I was doing as I was contaminating the whole lab. I never thought about long-term effects. Hmmmm. This could explain a lot of things...
When I was an adolescent (I'm 53 now)... a friend had a little brown jug that had mercury in it. It was liquid metal, and we would pour it out and watch it separate, we'd pick it up and try to hold it... how stupid! We did this every once in a while.. would that cause any health problems many years down the line?
I'm a couple years older than you and our Science teacher in, I think, 7th grade gave each table of two kids some mercury to play with. Man that was almost as much fun as the Dust Explosion Can. Or the thing that separated hydrogen and oxygen out of water. Don't know if it would cause problems down the road, though.
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