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Get it together, Harvard: Another spill forces evacuation, but at least this one was odorless
By adamg on Fri, 12/17/2010 - 6:27am
The Crimson reports a computer lab had to be evacuated when a student spilled some mercury:
The student had the mercury in his possession for no particular reason, according to Mathers. "It was something a friend gave him some time ago that he happened to have in his bag," he said.
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Comments
Oh honestly...
When I was a kid, my dad gave me a capsule full of mercury because there wasn't any in my old chemistry set. I used to empty it out and play with it, then force it back into the capsule, getting some on my hands. I'm still here.
I remember doing something like that too
whereas these days I worry about dropping and breaking a compact fluorescent light bulb.
Lead Shot
Seems like it was used for just about everything requiring weight, as well as for hunting.
I used to load shotgun shells before we went hunting. My parents and grandparents would pay me a penny per shell.
Now we know why that ain't such a good idea. The whole "I survived" thing is a bit of an absurdity anyway - "survivors" aren't the problem, and even then there is no telling what was lost. In various jobs I have had, I have noticed that there is a likely lead-poisoned population of older people who are very difficult to work with unless you give them very specific instructions and watch as they do anything remotely new. These were people who got the worst of the leaded gasoline exhaust and lead paint exposures, and they survived ... but the missing IQ points do count. That doesn't even get into how chemical exposures can cut life span, emerging associations between heavy metals and the "alzheimer's epidemic", etc.
Is lead dangerous to touch?
I thought it was only a problem if you eat or breathe it -- not just hold it in your hands while, say, loading a gun.
Ever dump out a bag of shot?
Dust gets generated during handling, gets on the shot, etc. The bags would have dust in them from their travels as well.
Stuffing shells involves pouring it out of the bag, measuring it, and pouring it into shells. Our hands would get gray.
Nope, I don't know anything at all about shotguns
having never used one. I did fire rifles at paper targets in Boy Scout camp, but that was a long time ago and I don't remember what the ammunition looked like.
Back in the day, mercury was
Back in the day, mercury was used as a first aid tool to stop bleeding.
And when I was in middle school, they let us poke it.
And now we evacuate? Pathetic. Get a paper towel, pick it up, and toss it. It's mercury, not anthrax.
yeah,it's perfectly safe because 40 years ago you played with it
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28element%29...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning
Our scientific knowledge of the effects of mercury couldn't possibly have advanced since you were in middle school, right?
I was in middle school 15
I was in middle school 15 years ago.
The real issue is that if
The real issue is that if they don't get it cleaned up properly, it can seep into the floor and then mercury vapor can remain in the room and anyone who works there will be breathing it in on a regular basis.
Tsk, HARVARD!!
Come on, Harvard. Let's leave the elemental goofs in Cambridge to the nerds at MIT where they belong. Geez, next thing you know, someone will talk about how MIT has a business school to rival Harvard's. Sheesh!
Mercurial as Mercury, Quick as Quicksilver
In grade school large mercury barometers were standard issue. If some mercury was spilled in handling the barometer no big deal. Just clean it up and go on with business. Evacuation would never occur to anyone. Of course that was during duck and cover; like a school desk would protect against an atomic blast.
Actually mercury was fun to play with. The only substance that was convex instead of concave and pushing it around and watching it merge with itself was fun.
Now an entire room is evacuated when mercury is spilled (of course it's still loaded in fish).
But then lead was known to be dangerous going all the way back to the late 19th century. But it was only anecdotal; few thought that lead would poison children.
What will be the next phenomena to be acknowledged late as dangerous to human health? Radiation from cell phones?
An evacuation! Hilarious.
An evacuation! Hilarious. Not to sound like the old coot I undoubtedly am, but we have the litiguous nature of our society to blame for this sort of nonsense.
Whit
Mercury no laughing matter
I'm sure you guys know this, but heavy metals do not cause the kind of danger where your face melts off and you catch fire. You could well handle all the mercury you wanted as a child or while messing around with lead shot and show no apparent ill effects. You could also stand in front of a broken X-ray machine, take a lethal dose of radiation and walk away with no apparent ill effects. The danger of something is not necessarily related to how dangerous it FEELS to you at the time.
Mercury is extremely toxic! Don't mess around with it.
tuff guys
I used to play with mercury when I was a kid too. Doesn't mean I'll be putting back shots of the stuff now just because "I'm still here."
I think it's just basic risk analysis -- there are always new substances and things that we bring into this world that we just don't know the long term effects of (all these electronic devices hanging off every part of our bodies for instance). Strap a rat to a cell phone for its life span and you might not see any real effect (except diminished dinner conversation from the rat as he spends all his time texting his friends) -- but that along with the plastic bottles, the residual pharmaceuticals in people's pee getting into our ground and surface water supplies, the genetically modified malt-o-meal and eventually you end up with something like Lilly Tomlin in the "Incredible Shrinking Woman." For the vast majority of us we seem to be doing ok -- but then I assume you're not curious about cancer rates, Alzheimer's and every other disease that gets reported as an epidemic.
If you're regularly driving drunk and/or binge drinking or wearing a Yankees hat around North Station after games let out (and bars let out) then putzing around with mercury or filling shotgun shells while eating Cheetos is the least of your worries.