[spill]

Hello everyone,

I'm hoping someone can help.  I recently had a mercury spill by accidentally breaking a thermometer.  Not knowing the precautions to be taken at the time, I cleaned up not protecting my hands, etc.    My question is how would I know if the jewelery I was wearing is contaminated? Are there any signs to look for in the jewellery?  I was wearing both white and yellow gold.   Thanks for any advice you could give!

[Borek]

It is not easy to get poisoned by this amount of mercury in such situation, so don't bother. If your jewelry was amalgamated by mercury it is not dangerous either. Take a look at gold - if it was amalgamated it will have have silver stains (silver in color).

[spill]

Thanks for that Borek,

What about white gold?  Will anything show in that?

[Borek]

No idea what exactly white gold is - probably some gold/silver alloy? If so, you won't notice anything more than perhaps some dull surface.

[constant thinker]

Thermometers don't use mercury anymore. Unless it is an old one. Old as in like 15 years. I forget the exact date they stopped using mercury and switched to alcohol and red dye. You have nothing to worry about probably.

[savoy7]

http://www.sciencekit.com/category.asp_Q_c_E_436518

I guess this was printed 15 years ago.  

Hg thermometers are still being produced and still used.

By the way, I did post one way of containing Hg about a month ago.  The concern is the vapor.  http://www2.fpm.wisc.edu/chemsafety/Guide2/chapter5adobe.pdf
page 13 has a Hg spill powder that can be used to try to contain the vapor.

savoy

[spill]

Thanks everyone.

The thermometer I broke did have mercury in it and it wasn't an old one - perhaps 1 - 2 years old.  

I was also told by someone at the poison control that because I threw the rag I wiped the mercury with off the floor in the washing machine, my washing machine was contaminated as well.  

Unfortunately, we cannot claim any house contents through our home insurance, but I can claim jewelery, but I just wanted to know for sure whether or not my jewelery had been contaminated.

[jdurg]

White gold is a mixture of gold, palladium and nickel, generally speaking.  If there was any reaction with the gold, you'd see dark colored grayish spots on the jewelery.  With yellow gold it's pretty easy to spot, and with the white gold you'd notice the differences in the overall coloring where the mercury contacted it.  For the Hg to amalgamate the metal, it really has to be in contact with it for a good deal of time.  Just having a drop or two of mercury land on the ring, then quickly wiping it away will not result in an amalgamation.

If you are really concerned about the Hg, just take the jewelery and place it on a high flame in an outdoor grill.  It takes quite a bit of heat to melt the jewelery, but only a little bit to make any remaining Hg vaporize away.  Again, make sure this is done outside and stand upwind from the vapor.  The high temperatures will cause any Hg that is remaining on the surface to evaporate off of the metal.

Now in reality, one mercury thermometer has about .5-1 gram of actual mercury in there.  It's not a hell of a lot so if one breaks the 'contamination' isn't something to be very worried about.  You don't want to be consistantly breaking thermometers with Hg in them, but having one break on you isn't going to poison you in any real manner.  (A good analogy to the exposure of one thermometer's worth of Hg would be like having a little cut on your hand.  That little cut on its own really doesn't cause any harm and is more of an annoyance than anything else.  Now if you kept adding new cuts to your hand, then you'd have a problem due to the sheer number of them.  You would also have a problem if you had some pre-existing condition that made the cut more damaging or unable to heal as quickly).

[constant thinker]

Ok how about in general Hg isn't used in thermometers. It is usually alcohol. I'd imagine that the reason you can still buy them is they are more accurate than metal and alcohol. I stand corrected.

P.S. I believe there was some law that said that Hg thermometers would be phased out. Any place that couldn't afford to replace the thermometers/thermostats could keep them but everyplace else had to replace. This law came about in the 90's I think.

I also like the quote at the bottom of your posts jdurg.

[limpet chicken]

The pharmacy down 5 minutes walk from where I live, still sells mercury thermometers to this day, if ever I need small amounts of mercury, say, for performing reductive aminations using aluminium amalgam, I just buy one of those thermometers and crack the little bugger open, to obtain usually about 2g of Hg metal, in the thermometers my local sells.

It isn't exactly cheap, but for an element collectors Hg sample, or for reductive aminations using Al/HgCl2, one only needs a trace of mercuric chloride, so a single thermometer will last several reactions.

I USED to do that any rate, until I found my source for kilogram quantities of mercury

[constant thinker]

Well I am surprised. A teacher told me that Hg thermometers are more expensive than alcohol and special orders but aren't generally found in stores. Except for a chemistry store. I asked this yesterday.

[xiankai]

thats curious... when i broke a mecury thermometer in my science lab a month ago, i was fined 2 bucks compared to a bigger 5 bucks for an alcohol thermometer.

the lab assistant immediatly spreaded yellow chalk powder over it (dunno what it is), but she sure used a generous and plentiful serving of it.

[Borek]

Thermometer price depend more on its accuracy then on the filling.

Yellow dust was probably sulphur. HgS is much safer the mercury itself. It is insoluble in water (one of the lowest solubilities known) and the mercury vapor pressure over HgS is for all practical purposes zero.

[zarr]

Hi,

 I'm a  beginner in chemistry and I have a question for you, guys.
I wonder that it is possible to color the mercury.

Thanks