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Upcoming article on Mercury.

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jdurg:
I want to let you guys know that I'm slowly, and the key word is slowly, working on my next article which will be about mercury.  There is so much to write on this element that it may be my longest article yet.  I plan on writing about the mystique of mercury and why it seems to attract everybody to it, as well as the toxicity and dangers of it.  I have lots of personal tales dealing with mercury that I can't wait to talk about.  (Such as how I used to play with it as a kid  ;D)  I will also talk about the horribly tragic incident out in Dartmouth, I believe, dealing with organic mercury compounds and how it took the life of a chemist who dropped one tiny doplet on her gloves.  I plan on having pictures of my own mercury, as well as pictures from Theodore Gray's site where he has an amazing picture of a guy sitting ON a pool of mercury!  (So if you can't wait, head on over to his site which I linked to in our links section).  Depending on the legality of it, I'll also show a frame or two from the making of Terminator 2 where they used gallons of mercury to create the liquid metal effect for the T-1000.  I'll be talking about the use of mercury in terms of pressure, as well as its use in fluorescent light bulbs and old thermostats.  There is so much to talk about that it will take me quite a while to put together, so just sit tight as the wait will be worth it, I think.  ;)  (I'm also busy admiring my new five-gram pellet of Osmium metal which looks absolutely stunning.  I think I may start to tackle the Platinum Group Metals next).

Mitch:
Cool, I look forward to reading it. Also, this briefly describes the dartmouth incident http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/82/i03/html/8203sci2.html

Scratch-:
Yay, I can't wait to read it!  ;D

Donaldson Tan:

--- Quote from: Mitch on June 22, 2004, 03:51:33 PM ---Cool, I look forward to reading it. Also, this briefly describes the dartmouth incident http://pubs.acs.org/isubscribe/journals/cen/82/i03/html/8203sci2.html

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I don't have an account with ACS. I can't access your link. Could you briefly describe the Darmouth Incident? I think lots of people would like to know

 ;D

Mitch:

--- Quote ---One well-documented case of mercury poisoning involved a chemistry professor, Karen E. Wetterhahn, at Dartmouth College. She spilled a few drops of highly toxic dimethylmercury on her gloved hand in August, and her highest exposure level, according to testing of hair samples, was in August. Yet not until December did the symptoms of mercury toxicity appear. This latent time span is unpredictable and does not seem to be dependent on dose, Clarkson says. "It is as if it triggers something--some process that takes its own time," he adds.

The extent to which methylmercury leaves the body plays a role in its toxicity. Methylmercury's exit from the body takes advantage of natural transport mechanisms. Only a small proportion of methylmercury leaves the body in urine because the kidney reabsorbs it. Yet methylmercury that gets into liver cells is pumped out into the bile as methylmercury-glutathione, according to studies conducted by Ned Ballatori at the University of Rochester. As it passes down the biliary tract, some of it converts back to methylmercury-cysteine and is reabsorbed. But some is also converted by the natural microflora in the gut to inorganic mercury, which is excreted, according to Ian Rowland, a professor at the University of Ulster, in Northern Ireland. Each day, an adult body releases about 1% of its total methylmercury burden
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