I saw a post reference mercury and had to post this. Mercury Dangers!!

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Original Post:http://www.bobvila.com/wwwboard/messages/74664.html


This is experence speaking. Several years ago eather my son or a visiting child got a bottle of mercury out of my shop and took it into my son's room, (some was spilled) we did not know this happened. Over the next few weeks my son had problems sleeping, balance problems, skin rashes, rapid heart beat and many other problems. He was taken to several local doctors with no help. His regular doctor sent us to Ar. Childrens Hospital in Little Rock where an OLD TIME doctor heard our Drs. talking about the case and figured out the problem. They did a heavy metal blood screen and found high amounts of mercury in all of us. My son spent 2 weeks in ICU and several weeks of VERY PAINFUL recovery. It cost almost 25,000 dollars to clean the house up and that was with me doing most of the work.
One of the main symptoms joint pain and excess salivation. My wife says main symptoms is getting just plain MEAN. From the book or movie Alice in Wonderland the charcter The Mad Hatter was based on a person with mercury toxicity; mercury was used in the production of felt. On elemental mercury which is the kind being discussed, liquid metal or the kind you can see there is very little danger handling or swollowing it, the problem come it when you breath the vapors. If you hold a soft light behind a container of mercury you can see a light blue vapor being produced. This is the reason mercury vapor lights makes objects appear blue. I know most of us DID play with the stuff when we were kids, but at my house there was no AC, windows were kept open or cracked most of the year. In short houses are much tighter now with very little or no fresh air.

If there are any questions I can provide several links. If you think you might have a mercury problem check with your department of health. A word of warning many home insurance policys do NOT cover this type of toxic clean up and once dept of health finds a problem they kind of take over and can cause problems. I was VERY luckey in that everyone involved with my mess was very coporative.