Envirnonmental Whackos True Agenda Finally Revealed

Mottleydude said:
I'm a Certified Hazmat manager. I work with the shit for a living. Look at the DOT Hazmat table and see for your self. Elemental mercury is a class 8 (Corrosive) hazard and not a class 6.1 (Toxic).

Do your homework before you pop off.
Click to expand...
Explains a lot.:)
 
gonzojournals said:
Elemental mercury (pure mercury) is readily absorbed through the skin. However, because mercury has a very high surface tension at room temperature, [14] it does not wet the skin (as water would) and the contact area is therefore limited (reducing absorption rates). Materials with high surface tensions tend to form near spherical droplets which do not conform fully to topologically complex surfaces like skin (the mercury touches the papillary ridges, not the grooves). Nonetheless, handling mercury with unprotected hands has resulted in cases of severe mercury poisoning.[2]

Mercury vapour is rapidly absorbed into the body through the respiratory tract during inhalation. Chronic exposure, even at low concentrations in the range 0.7–42 ?g/m3, has been shown in case control studies to cause effects such as tremors, impaired cognitive skills, and sleep disturbance in workers.[15][16] Mercury is only poorly absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract.

Francis Weston Sears and Mark W Zemanski (1955). University Physics, 2nd ed., Addison Wesley.

ToxFAQs: Mercury. Agency for Toxic Substances and Disease Registry (1999-04).

Ngim CH, Foo SC, Boey KW, and Keyaratnam J (1992). "Chronic neurobehavioral effects of elemental mercury in dentists". British Journal of Industrial Medicine 49: 782-790.

Liang YX, Sun RK, Chen ZQ, and Li LH. "Psychological effects of low exposure to mercury vapor: Application of computer-administered neurobehavioral evaluation system". Environmental Research 60: 320-327.
Click to expand...

Mercury vapor isn't elemental mercury. It's mercury hydride. Which is, as you noted, quite toxic by inhilation, but it's not elemental Mercury. Elemental mercury absorption rate on epithelial tissue is slow and it will, in fact, chemically burn the tissue, before it is absorbed at high levels which is why DOT classifies it as a corrosive (Hazard Class 8). By oral exposure (rat) elemental mercury has an LD50 (lethal dose 50%) of 210 mg/Kg, that makes it a low level toxic (acutely toxic by oral route being < 50 mg/kg). By dermal absorption it's LD50 (rat) is 1500mg/kg. Greater than 500 mg/kg dermal LD50 is essentially considered such a low toxicity that it's not even regulated for that hazard by 49 CFR 172.101. It's regulated for Corrosivity. But that's DOT.

By EPA standards Elemental Mercury is regulated for toxicity, not because Elemental mercury is it'self acutely toxic but because the compunds it forms are acutely and chronically toxic. That and they bioaccumulate.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top