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Comment by trutannus | Hacker News Reader

Worked with a professor who knew this person. He talked about this not infrequently. All the grad students knew of the story as well, and would talk about it. Her death really shook up the NMR community. It was the reason we never use DEM in our lab, and why many try to avoid it at all costs even now. If I remember properly, and this was over 10 years ago, the reason its commonly used is to calibrate the spectrometers, so in some areas it gets hard to avoid.

Also, the article mentions you need nitrile gloves to protect yourself from it. This is not sufficient and is dangerously misinformed. You need silver shield gloves to protect yourself from it.

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> Also, the article mentions you need nitrile gloves to protect yourself from it.

I don't see that. With respect to an OSHA bulletin, the article says:

  The bulletin also urged that, aside from wearing a face shield, anyone working with dimethylmercury should wear Silver Shield laminate gloves beneath abrasion-resistant outer gloves.

The mention of nitrile gloves is in a more general context:

  Sugden points out that, when dealing with toxic substances, labs have shifted from latex gloves to nitrile gloves, [...]

Yeah I wouldn't even want nitrile gloves on with the stuff.

It is worth explaining just what is wrong with it. Mercury of course is a toxic compound, but kids used to crack mercury thermometers in their mouths and suffer no consequences. Pressure gauges came with exposed tubs of mercury and you would get some on your hands and it was fine, even kind of fun to play around with. Felters famously felt symptoms after careers of using it, usually blamed on long term inhalation, but it required a long time and lots of exposure to get to that point. Many people received dental amalgams with mercury bases and while there has always been a conspiracy theory about it, it has never been acutely toxic enough to be mainstream—the shift to other composites has instead been driven by comfort (metal fillings conduct heat and cold at an unnatural rate) and aesthetics (the new composites are white instead of silvery).

The basic reason is that the body does not eat metal and does not know what to do with it largely. Even with the metals that the body uses, like cobalt, it wraps every atom of cobalt in a big old ring of carbon and that's Vitamin B12.

Dimethyl mercury, is different from normal mercury, in a similar way. The methyl groups are organic groups that your body is much more willing to absorb and process. So the latex is not protecting you nearly as much because latex is this organic natural filter that lets things through... But also your skin is not protecting you because this stuff can seep into your skin via those methyl groups, your cells are just like “oh you look interesting I can take you into my chemistry.”

So yeah, milligrams are all it takes, tiny trace amounts: but the reason that you don't think of it being quite that dangerous is that your exposure to the liquid metal version is an exposure to a form that your body is uniquely unsuited to process or absorb. Water off a duck's back. Even though the water contains neurotoxin, it just rolls right off. Even, in our case, when ingested. But add these little methyl groups, methylmercury and dimethylmercury and really any organic mercury molecule, it gets real bad real fast because it's no longer rolling off our backs, it's soaking into our feathers.

When I was a kid I would take the mercury from tilt-switches and pour it from hand to hand.

So heavy and shiny!

To the author of dead sibling comment: please, notify authorities for proper disposal and cleanup. Mercury contamination is extremely dangerous and can cause problems to your or other families for generations.

While small balls of Mercury might not seem dangerous, their continued presence means Mercury will slowly seep into environment over years and decades.

Quite: see for example https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg12817450-800-the-merc... for an example of the effects of mercury contamination in a building used for Physics research in Cambridge UK

Thank you very much for taking the time to write such a fascinating comment!

So what is the mercury compound they put in multi-dose vaccines?

EDIT: Thiomersal, and it looks pretty organic. I've read that it leaves the bloodstream quickly, but not seen solid evidence that its leaving the body.

from: https://www.cdc.gov/vaccinesafety/concerns/thimerosal/index.... "Thimerosal contains ethylmercury, which is cleared from the human body more quickly than methylmercury, and is therefore less likely to cause any harm."

They used to put thimerosal in a bunch more vaccines.

Until the clamour of anti-vaxxers who insisted that the rise in childhood autism cases was a direct cause of it (despite no evidence to back the claim) got so loud that they stopped using it in childhood vaccines in 2001. And childhood autism rates continued to rise unaffected by the change, proving (again) that this was due to some other factor (more sensitive diagnosis being the most popular theory) and also that the anti-vaxxers were full of shit and had no idea what they were talking about.

I know we're not supposed to discuss downvotes, but can't help but be curious why parent was downvoted? Factual errors? Cuss words? No references? Disagreement in opinion? It would be more interesting if they left a comment.

I'm speculating, but maybe it seemed like an unnecessary / unconstructive rant as against a group.

Thiomersal/Thimerosal leaves the bloodstream more quickly - but that is a relative term. Like you said, I've not seen not seen solid evidence that its leaving the body - but even then the best guesstimates are still half a year in the body instead of a full year or more like methylmercury.

It can also cross into the brain if my memory serves me correctly. Thimerosal may not be deadly, but is certainty to be avoided if possible.

> Thiomersal

Also known as Merthiolate, a very popular topical antiseptic when I was younger (very popular as in: at least where I lived, the go-to antiseptic for a small cut or abrasion was either Merthiolate, or Mercurochrome which is another mercury compound, or a hydrogen peroxide solution; every kid from back then is familiar with at least one, if not all, of these antiseptics). It was so popular that, now that it's no longer available, the Merthiolate brand has been repurposed for a completely unrelated antiseptic (Chlorhexidine), to cash on all that popularity.

My go-to for topical use is Lugol's Idoine solution. Not only a disinfectant, but appears to aid healing (scars in particular) and some claim is anti-cancer.

Thank you for your explanation.

Felters were mad from exposure to mercuric nitrate, not metallic mercury: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felt#Carroting

Metallic mercury can poison you if you inhale enough of it, yes, but that wasn't what the felters were suffering.

It's a nice step in the right direction, for sure. But, having worked paying jobs in both Chemistry and Product Safety: Not counting latex, nitrile is the bare minimum, really, when it comes to chemical resistivity, and it cannot handle heat (> 40 °C). But hot surfaces are very common in labs. Hands off of latex gloves, though! Not only are they no good against most chemicals, they can fill up like a sponge and soak your hands with them.

The article mentions it:

"The bulletin also urged that, aside from wearing a face shield, anyone working with dimethylmercury should wear Silver Shield laminate gloves beneath abrasion-resistant outer gloves. [...] Sugden points out that, when dealing with toxic substances, labs have shifted from latex gloves to nitrile gloves, which are less porous"

If I were a chemist and I had to work with that satan's brew I wouldn't trust any gloves. I'd want a proper waldo setup.

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