,
13 tweets,
5 min read
Read on Twitter
This is gallium, not mercury.
1200 retweets so far, and not only is it factually wrong but it suggests playing with a highly toxic element with your bare hands.
This is dangerous, @ZonePhysics. Take it down.
1200 retweets so far, and not only is it factually wrong but it suggests playing with a highly toxic element with your bare hands.
This is dangerous, @ZonePhysics. Take it down.
A few people pointing out that technically handling elemental mercury is actually not *that* dangerous
eg @NileRed2 made this video where he touches it and is (AFAIK at the time of writing) not dead
I also remember looking into this when considering an amalgam filling (which I eventually opted for), and finding some INCREDIBLE cases of people who have *injected themselves* with mercury and survived!
See eg ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/P…
Case 2 is astonishing: ‘A 20 year-old male was admitted to our hospital on 15th February 2005 with a history of intravenous injection of mercury taken by him and his friend as an aphrodisiac.’
AS AN APHRODISIAC
Case 2 is astonishing: ‘A 20 year-old male was admitted to our hospital on 15th February 2005 with a history of intravenous injection of mercury taken by him and his friend as an aphrodisiac.’
AS AN APHRODISIAC
However, mercury compounds are ridiculously toxic. Like, *will kill you through your gloves*. Good luck checking that your sample is perfectly pure and avoiding this.
Also, the vapour is also very bad news. Since mercury has a very narrow temperature range in which it’s a liquid (melts at −38°C, boils at 357°C), it’s evaporating all the time at normal temperatures, and it’s very toxic when inhaled.
So no, someone playing with mercury in their hand probably won’t just keel over and die, but the risks are sufficient that casually promoting it to thousands of untrained people on Twitter probably isn’t a great idea
Some fun stuff from @SellaTheChemist in reply to this tweet about mercury being weird, which it kind of is and kind of isn’t
I will definitely be listening to this later
Mercury resistance in bacteria may drive antibiotic resistance?! Wow. Another reason to be careful with the mercury, kids.
Paper for the nerds: jmm.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journa…
Paper for the nerds: jmm.microbiologyresearch.org/content/journa…
Hooray! @ZonePhysics’s stupid tweet has been removed. I assume some of the Twitter complaints got through? Good work team :)
Here’s a screenshot I took earlier for posterity…
Here’s a screenshot I took earlier for posterity…
