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Comment by prodmerc | Hacker News Reader

(3) clean it up with a dustpan :-D

Seriously, mercury is not dangerous unless inhaled or ingested. Suit up with a cheap hazmat and gloves and clean away...

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Yeha, I'm a bit dumbfounded about the calling of the fire dept, the reaction and so on. I would have just figured out where it was coming from and cleaned it up myself with some gloves and a dustpan.

And if you miss any, your young daughter is going to find it. Seriously isn't something you want to mess with.

This happened to me when I was about 9, when I didn't know what mercury was. There was a few droplets on the floor and I ended up poking it with my index finger for a few minutes. To this day I don't know what the medical effects were.

Unless you licked your finger afterwards, nothing.

Even if you lick your finger, if it is elemental mercury then probably nothing either. But don't try it!

Just curious: what would it need to be for it to do something? Not that I'm planning to...

Atomized somehow so that it would be inhaled.

> Yeha, I'm a bit dumbfounded about the calling of the fire dept, the reaction and so on. I would have just figured out where it was coming from and cleaned it up myself with some gloves and a dustpan.

This is probably why you don't clean up mercury for a living. You don't know the complications until you're taught them.

This is all I'd do. Shit inside walls is likely never going to be disturbed, so a face mask + gloves + dustpan and brush would get me through cleaning up the spill.

But then again, I have a generally lax regard for life and limb. The way I figure it, my drinking, obesity and other vices probably erode my life expectancy more than a single controlled exposure to mercury.

Well, that's the wrong logic. Exposure to mercury is bad and your other health problems will compound this. (Comorbidity).

I would imagine it's the verification and figuring out where it is that's a hard problem. How would you reassure yourself you got it all, especially if it seeped through the floor?

Buy a meter designed to detect any mercury vapor. I'm sure it's pricy, but it's less than $50K.

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