Playing with mercury as a child (x-ray, pregnant, skin, hair)
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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?
My mother often talks about the same thing--as a child they would take the mercury out of broken thermometers and roll it around in their hands. She's in her 60's now and is fine. But there were lots of dangerous things back then--the shoe stores that x-rayed your feet in the shoes to see if they fit also comes to mind as another danger that was not known about.
I played with mercury when I was a kid as well, and thought it was no big deal until a local school evacuated everyone and called in a haz-mat team because a glass thermometer broke and leaked mercury. Overkill? Perhaps, but at almost 40 (give me a few days,) I thought it would be worth more investigation. Especially since I've been dealing with Multiple Sclerosis for 17 1/2 years and was shocked to learn that some of the effects of mercury mimic some of the symptoms I deal with. I am now working on detoxifying my system and have more good days than bad.
In my research, I learned the vapors are more damaging than physical contact, though neither are good.
I worked with a guy who grew up in Oxnard Ca. He told me there used to be large blobs of mercury on the ground around his neighborhood and all the neighborhood kids would pick up hand fulls and throw it at each other ! He said lots of it got in his mouth. Yuck ! Tuna has a high mercury content and I won't eat it anymore, thanks to SARDINES I don't have to give up all my "tuna" recipes. I just substitute Reeses Boneless and Skinless Sardine Fillets for the tuna. More good Omega oils and 40 times less mercury than Albacore.
I recently turned 62 yrs old and I remember breaking thermometers and playing with mercury. All the kids did it. It was especialy fun to rub it on coins and make them nice and shiny.
I must have absorbed some and now it is effecting me. My whiskers are white and my hair is starting to get grey. Other than that, I haven't noticed much as far as consequences.
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?
We've all done stupid things that we had no clue would affect us later.
My dad was a mechanic, products containing benzene were common.
He ended up with a specific cancer from those products, fought 8 months and didn't make it. It was when he hit 65 that he went downhill.
If you have mercury concerns you should get tested.
If you have silver fillings, have them replaced.
Aren't you surprised that we aren't all dead! I also did the mercury thing as a kid. we didn't wear seatbelts, mom's smoked and drank when they were pregnant, we did the "cut your finger, blood-brother thing", I can't even think of all of the other dangerous things we did!!!!
Liquid mercury is poorly absorbed by skin or the digestive tract, so one or two instances of playing with mercury from a thermometer would likely not result in significant absorption of mercury.
Mercury's dangerous forms are mercury vapor, and certain mercury compounds that are more easily absorbed.
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