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Comment by thaumaturgy | Hacker News Reader

You're forgetting (3): get the shopvac, vacuum it all up, and then dump it in the back yard.

And yes, I know people that would do exactly that.

Seriously, NO!! If anyone ever reads this do NOT use a shopvac. You will make the problem 10000x worse. Mercury is only an acute health hazard if vaporized. A shopvac will instantly vaporize it. You will turn an expensive and irritating headache into a medical and possibly life-threatening emergency.

Unfortunately in this case they ended up having to demolish a floor and ceiling to find all the mercury that had soaked through the floor; a shopvac won't do that.

A shopvac (or any vacuum not designed for mercury) would be a really bad idea: they vaporize the mercury and seriously distribute it around the house.

I agree with you both, but that doesn't change that I suspect this would be the default approach for a lot of people that have neither the money nor the ideology to justify a professional cleanup.

An easy example of this kind of thinking is that people used to (and many still do) bury used motor oil in their yard. (See e.g. http://www.experienceproject.com/question-answer/How-Can-I-D...)

There are alot of dangerous polutants out there, and around the home, but run-of-the-mill motor oil is not really one of them.

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/1991-04-28/old-motor-oil...

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