Goodbye to Mercury

Rhe element, not the planet. As part of thinning stuff we do not need in preparation for our move, a few items have turned out to be harder to dispose of then I expected.

Back in the 1960s, mercury was something with which most kids had some chance to play. It is incredibly dense (13x water; lead will float in it), very standoffish from almost everything, and with a weird negative meniscus.  Unlike water which will slightly rise on the inside of a container, mercury will do the opposite. 

It was not generally considered a particularly risky material to have on your hands. We always washed thoroughly after handling it and we all knew it did not belong in our bodies.

Somewhere in the 1970s or 1980s, the worryworts turned mercury into thr great hazard. My recollection from chemistry classes turns out to be what EPA says: mercuric organic compounds are terrible neurotoxins and represent a serious hazard in your body including through cuts in the skin and seafood. Mercury vapor is a serious hazard and letting it heat is a bad idea. But elemental mercury is not terribly dangerous to handle.

From the procedures required to dispose of it, you would think that it requires a haz-mat suit and air cover. We are having a hard time finding somewhere that will take it. 

The uranium seems to be even harder to properly discard. This is radiation meter test sample, bought on Amazon, and delivered in normal mail, not a leadlined van. It is not uranium metal but a thumbnail sized piece of uranium ore.

It is an alpha particle emitter. Alpha particles are low energy and are stopped by a sheet of paper, your skin, or the metal can in which thus uranium sits. Like mercury, you do not want in your body, where even the short range of alpha particles can be a carcinogen.

Heck, small amounts of uranium show up in ground water in the Boise area. Yet that word radioactive causes worrywort paranoia, even at the very low levels and intensities of alpha particles.

Anyway, I do not need either the mercury or the uranium sample. I just need to get someone to accept them. The difficulty in finding a place to properly dispose of them suggests that for all the worrywortism, the powers that be want this stuff in a landfill.