Now I (and most of us here, I guess) have grown up around "Mercury's toxic! Avoid handling it! Do NOT screw around with this thing, if you value your life" and other equally heartening pieces of advice regarding mercury. Apparently mercury poisoning makes you, really lose it.
Now a while back I chanced upon a video on Youtube (I checked today, and now there're multiple videos on the same thing) where someone was messing around with elemental mercury … with his/her (I don't remember) bare hands.
Naturally I was taken aback. A quick check provided sufficient evidence to ascertain that he/she hadn't died as a result.
Now I posed this to a teacher of mine, and after some deliberation, he concluded that it isn't the mercury metal that's toxic. He told me that it's the various compounds of mercury that are formed by elemental mercury once it gets in your system (i.e- once you drink it) which are responsible for the toxicity. So apparently touching metallic mercury with your bare hands isn't an issue, since the metal isn't subjected to all those metabolic reactions that go on inside the body; heck you can even gargle it and live (provided you spit it out afterwards) since mercury's fairly inert.
So what I'd like to know is
Is it true that metallic mercury by itself, isn't toxic?
*Spin-off questions:
Is there any substance to my teacher's claim? How come those asses that performed this mundane task survived and now live (seemingly) normal lives without going insane? Were they already insane prior to touching the mercury? Should I just go and touch some mercury, partly to discover if it is indeed possible to touch metal mercury safely (and partly just to let out all the stress that built up while typing out this question)?
Answer
Mercury is toxic, but you need to carefully define what you mean by toxic or you draw incorrect conclusions
Toxic is a broad term. It means a lot of different things. The timescale matters. Some toxic things take years to exhibit their effects; others act instantly.
A binary distinction between toxic and not-toxic is pretty meaningless: you need to define the context and the timescale of the toxicity.
Mercury metal and mercury compounds are usually considered toxic. But their effects are varied in time and degree. Mercury metal is pernicious but only if you are exposed to it over a long time period. In fact you could probably drink it with few ill effects. The body just doesn't absorb it quickly. What is dangerous about mercury is not short term exposure to the metal but long term exposure to the vapour. This is why people don't suffer immediate ill effects when handling the metal even without skin protection.
Mercury vapour is readily absorbed in the body and will accumulate in tissue causing a variety of long term effects. This was discovered by mercury miners who often developed long term problems from their exposure. And it was documented for science by some chemists who started to suffer effects after working with the metal over long periods of time and managed to document their own decline (see Stock's work, for example). Mercury metal is often widely used in laboratories to provide a limited overpressure for gas distribution (you allow the gas to bubble through a mercury manometer).
Since the toxicity was recognised, chemists have been a lot more careful and always avoid vapour buildup by working in well ventilated spaces and making sure that manometers containing mercury are vented safely to the outside (via scrubbing filters) along with other potentially toxic vapours.
There is little immediate risk when working with metallic mercury as long as you don't spill it somewhere where it will collect and allow vapour to build up in the atmosphere.
Mercury compounds are a bigger risk. Some are readily absorbed into the body. The worst sort are mercury organometallic which are both volatile and penetrate the skin quickly. If you work with those you need to take extreme precautions. Even experienced chemists have been killed by accidents involving things like methyl mercury (see this tragic story).
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