Organic mercury is the real culprit !
The mercury from the thermometers by itself is not dangerous, I
saw the process of amalgamation of Hg (mercury) on a copper
penny. Mercury is used in combination with gold and silver for
dental fillings. It lowers the melting temperature.
When batteries and such are improperly disposed of heavy metals
like mercury get leached into the environment and get
converted to the more toxic organic forms like methyl mercury.
A few years ago a woman chemist lost her life due to an unseen drop
of methyl mercury concentrate landing on her latex gloved hand.
She had followed all safety procedures but the two pairs of latex rubber
gloves she wore were the wrong kind and offered no protection against
methyl mercury. If she had worn the blue nitrile gloves she would be
alive today. I read the whole story which was written up in the journal
SCIENCE a while back. It's a sad story but I'm glad I read it because
I had to dispose of some not quite as dangerous organic mercury and other
heavy metal compounds used for X-ray crystallography a few months ago. I
ordered a case of boxes of the blue nitrile gloves and made sure that every
one who was likely to come in contact wore them.
Because old discarded mercury batteries can have their contents leached into
the environment and eventually converted to the toxic organic mercury is
the
reason they have been taken off the market.
I finally got my OM1n converted by John Hermanson to take the silver oxide
battery and it works great ! I wonder if someone has a fix for my reliable
old
Gossen Luna Pro light meter ?
Hank Hogan mailto:hogant@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://flzhgn.home.mindspring.com/indexc.htm
There are little adaptors that hold the silver battery and drop into
the compartment for the 635 battery. I use one in my Metrawatt light
meter. Last I heard John Hermanson was selling them.
Winsor
--
Winsor Crosby
Long Beach, California, USA
mailto:wincros@xxxxxxxxxxx
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