Misc data and adventures of a Tayopa treasure hunter

[weekender]

I also remember pouring out a vial full Into
my hand in science class, stepping out into the
and throwing it. I'll never forget how it slid across
the floors and climbed the walls when it hit. They
would probably demo the whole school and campus nowdays.
-Weekender

 

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[Simon1]

I remember as a kid, using Mercury (that we got from broken thermometers) to polish dimes.....Just like many of the things that happen now days, I suspect that people are over reacting. The old adage, better safe than sorry taken to extremes. I also rode around without seat belts for a good part of my early life, but try it now, and i owe the government a hefty fine.....

JB

=======
Hey JB, I remember doing that exact same thing but with a quarter AND in Science class when I was in 7th grade.

I wonder if we attended the same school weekender ?

 

[PROSPECTORMIKEL]

I remember my late partner Jim, slid a bleach bottle across a counter and asked me to set it up on a shelf.
He didn’t say what was in it and I didn’t ask...

when the jug cleared the edge of the counter, I hit my head on the counter and I ran out of arm before the jug hit the floor.

It was about 2/3 full of mercury!

I never saw it coming, and I never got him back..

#/:0{>~

 

[Real of Tayopa]

I usedv it in my assay work, had fun with it. but I had a friend who had a tube containg Hg under presure that split while he was examing it, he swallowed a lot of mercury but it never appreciable effected him, However, it was reccomended as a purgatie in the past centuries, in other words you were supposed to drink it and jump up and down, the weight of the mercury was supposed to - well mechanicly solve your problem.

 

[Shortfinger]

=======
Hey JB, I remember doing that exact same thing but with a quarter AND in Science class when I was in 7th grade.

I wonder if we attended the same school weekender ?

Wow! A quarter! You must have been rich! It was all I could do to get a dime! Or, the other possibility is that you are much younger than I am.....

JB

 

[Cubfan64]

Elemental Mercury isn't really all that harmful - at least relatively speaking. It doesn't easily get absorbed through the skin, so therefore in acute cases of exposure (broken thermometer, etc...) it isn't terribly dangerous.

Mercurochrome (technically called merbromin) is only about 1% in an alcohol or water solution so once again isn't terribly harmful to you as far as acute exposure, however to make a long story short the FDA forced the product to have to undergo rigorous and expensive testing sometime in the 1990's in order to be approved for sale and since nobody wanted to spend the $$ and there were already better antiseptic options, mercurochrome basically stopped being sold.

Inorganic and organic mercury salts do cause exposure problems, but in most cases those are due to chronic exposure (with a few exceptions like a famous small but acute exposure to dimethyl mercury that caused a researcher's death in 1996) in certain industries that use those chemicals. Buildup of mercury compounds in fish that are then consumed by humans is also a chronic potential issue.

Where a person REALLY has both chronic and acute risks associated with mercury are due to inhalation of mercury vapors!! In any situation where you use mercury as a way to form an amalgam with gold for example and then drive off the mercury by burning it off, you are really exposing yourself to dangerous vapor that is readily absorbed into the bloodstream where it affects the central nervous system - that's not a theory, but a known scientific fact. If you sett up a safe distillation apparatus to recover the mercury vapor back as a liquid and avoid ever exposing yourself to the vapors that solves the problem, but back in the days (and I'm sure in many cases now too), people just don't go through that extra set of steps.

I think people over-react to breaking mercury thermometers, but better safe than sorry I guess. The fact is elemental mercury when exposed to the atmosphere will be vaporized slowly over time (more readily in warmer environments), so I imagine that's where the over-reaction comes from.

All in all, mercury like just about every other chemical should be respected but not feared, and precautions taken to avoid any exposure be it from inhalation, ingestion, injection or absorption.

 

[Simon1]

Wow! A quarter! You must have been rich! It was all I could do to get a dime! Or, the other possibility is that you are much younger than I am.....

JB

======
Wish I was young shortfinger, but I believe we are within 1-2 years apart and I am leaning towards only a one year age difference.

 

[Real of Tayopa]

I actually had a Mercury mine in Mexico. Ill see if I can find a picture of it and the story - it's posted somwhere in TN

 

[Simon1]

Thanks Senor Don Jose, that would by neat to see.

 

[PROSPECTORMIKEL]

Elemental Mercury isn't really all that harmful - at least relatively speaking. It doesn't easily get absorbed through the skin, so therefore in acute cases of exposure (broken thermometer, etc...) it isn't terribly dangerous.

Mercurochrome (technically called merbromin) is only about 1% in an alcohol or water solution so once again isn't terribly harmful to you as far as acute exposure, however to make a long story short the FDA forced the product to have to undergo rigorous and expensive testing sometime in the 1990's in order to be approved for sale and since nobody wanted to spend the $$ and there were already better antiseptic options, mercurochrome basically stopped being sold.

Inorganic and organic mercury salts do cause exposure problems, but in most cases those are due to chronic exposure (with a few exceptions like a famous small but acute exposure to dimethyl mercury that caused a researcher's death in 1996) in certain industries that use those chemicals. Buildup of mercury compounds in fish that are then consumed by humans is also a chronic potential issue.

Where a person REALLY has both chronic and acute risks associated with mercury are due to inhalation of mercury vapors!! In any situation where you use mercury as a way to form an amalgam with gold for example and then drive off the mercury by burning it off, you are really exposing yourself to dangerous vapor that is readily absorbed into the bloodstream where it affects the central nervous system - that's not a theory, but a known scientific fact. If you sett up a safe distillation apparatus to recover the mercury vapor back as a liquid and avoid ever exposing yourself to the vapors that solves the problem, but back in the days (and I'm sure in many cases now too), people just don't go through that extra set of steps.

I think people over-react to breaking mercury thermometers, but better safe than sorry I guess. The fact is elemental mercury when exposed to the atmosphere will be vaporized slowly over time (more readily in warmer environments), so I imagine that's where the over-reaction comes from.

All in all, mercury like just about every other chemical should be respected but not feared, and precautions taken to avoid any exposure be it from inhalation, ingestion, injection or absorption.

Back about seventeen years ago, I was working as a millwright journeyman, on a crew of 20 to 50 men, working two shifts. I was on the day shift, as was the company safety man.
He would make a visit about once a week.

At the peak of the most important and hazardous work pace, he discovered a discarded equipment panel that had a mercury switch that was broken.

He taped off an area half of a football field, right in the middle of the big process that we were being pushed to get finished!!

He, then called the safety department from the company that we were contracted with, and decided that they needed to build a berm around it
(Just in case it spilled on the floor..!)

So they had to get one of our employees that was certified to work in a confined space area to leave another job, an hour long drive, to suit up and check the air quality with a meter, before he was allowed to build the berm and collect the dime sized bubble with small plastic squeeze bottle and transfer it into a glass bottle!

All of this insanity over nothing!!!

Shut down the entire job site for about three hours.

We had 40 to 50 men and women on the clock 🕰, some of them were making over $50 an hour on overtime.

My supervisor had me and my crew, casually walk the rest of the job site to find any more of those switch boxes
(With instructions to cover them up until the insanity was gone, so that we could properly dispose of them, without costing thousands of dollars)

We were lucky that our safety man didn’t call OSHA...


I had seen it the day before all of this, and had planned to collect it to add it to my mercury bottle at home, but I had forgot to bring my squeeze bottle, probably because I was worn out and didn’t have any time for prospecting!

By the way, the safety man retired, a few weeks later...

#/80(:~

 

[Simon1]

They are so paranoid I guess. I remember when our forklift L.P. tanks were stored outside, it was cold, someone brought in a tank and it started to warm up and the pressure relief valve started to allow it to bleed off. One lead immediately cleared the entire building and started to call 911, I walked over and picked up the tank and took it outside and let it set until it was done, then brought it back in and put it on the forklift. Another time someone dropped a case of Clorox, it started to leak. I went over and picked it up and placed it in a plastic bag. Again, the lead had cleared the building and was preparing to call Hazmat in. Being the supervisor, I was able to handle the situation and not make a mountain out of a mole hole. Just need common sense, which they don't seem to teach as much now days

 

[PROSPECTORMIKEL]

They are so paranoid I guess. I remember when our forklift L.P. tanks were stored outside, it was cold, someone brought in a tank and it started to warm up and the pressure relief valve started to allow it to bleed off. One lead immediately cleared the entire building and started to call 911, I walked over and picked up the tank and took it outside and let it set until it was done, then brought it back in and put it on the forklift. Another time someone dropped a case of Clorox, it started to leak. I went over and picked it up and placed it in a plastic bag. Again, the lead had cleared the building and was preparing to call Hazmat in. Being the supervisor, I was able to handle the situation and not make a mountain out of a mole hole. Just need common sense, which they don't seem to teach as much now days

I’ve had that done backwards.
Underestimated acetone..
We were building large freezers for Tyson. They were shipped, ready to assemble, made in China.

One of the engineers thought that we were just plain stupid!!
Bad idea. He was always talking down to us.
He smarted off at me as I came up to the top, about 30 feet tall. It hit my last nerve and I snapped. I jumped out of the lift and ran at him and only wanted to see his face hit the cement floor before I hit bottom.

He realized that I was serious, and took off running. I almost got him, but the end of my safety harness caught on something and I lost forward motion just as I was close enough to wrap my feet around his ankle as he jumped from the first freezer to the next. He made it, just Barley , and jumped on to a ladder to get down ...

The next morning I noticed that he wasn’t at the morning safety meeting.

My supervisor gave me a different place to work, till the other engineers felt safe...
The specs on the finishing on the inside had to be wiped down with acetone and then sealed.

It turned out that my partner was afraid of heights , so I worked on a ladder when possible hanging from the spiral track.
After a while, I needed to cross over the air exchanger which were 24 feet tall and 20 inches wide and there four sets of scaffolding standing on the other side, so I climbed up the ladder and threw my safety lanyard at the corner and snagged a clip on the first try,

My partner, Jose, was below and watched me for a while and said
“ Hey Mike, lets go to break!?!”

I was happy to comply ... I made the three foot jump and slide down the outside of the scaffold to the floor and we went outside and sat down in the grass.
Jose went to get a snack and get one for me. A little while later he returned with the supervisor.

He said that they were going to find something else to clean the seams, The acetone was too volatile.

He gave me the rest of the day off with pay, as long as I didn’t try to kill the smart a$$ engineer.

So I laid around for four hours, and just before quitting time Charley dropped by to make sure I could get home...

A couple of power naps and a cup of coffee got me home.

There were no checks and balances
Were in place for the safety of the crew from getting stoned from the vapor!!

Learning curve!

#/:0{>~

 

[doc-d]

Mercury.....yes I remember in 7th or 8th grade playing with it in school on the science desks with our hands........
If I recall correctly there is some mercury in the CFL light bulbs....more drama when they break with the dreaded mercy escaping.

 

[Simon1]

Mercury.....yes I remember in 7th or 8th grade playing with it in school on the science desks with our hands........
If I recall correctly there is some mercury in the CFL light bulbs....more drama when they break with the dreaded mercy escaping.

=====
We did not end up as deformed monsters did we ? Looks like a pattern, we were indoctrinated in the 7th or 8th grade. But I suppose over a long prolonged period of time things might have been different. How you doing doc ?

 

[doc-d]

Simon1, thanks for asking.......I'm doing OK...;
Speaking of mercury, in processing of gold, where they heat the gold to evaporate the remaining mercury......everybody there seemed healthy also...

 

[Real of Tayopa]

computer probs my shift between hi ,and lower case keys doesn't work. I can't get my mail bank acc but how do I gett into TN if so ? eys work okin here ?c

 

[releventchair]

computer probs my shift between hi ,and lower keys doesn't work. I can't get my mail bank acc but how do I gett into TN if so ? eys work okin here ?c

You're here. (And greetings to you Trampe!)
Must be you didn't log out if hi-lo key is required to log in.

That would mean you need to stop in now and then to not be logged out from inactivity....

 

[Real of Tayopa]

thanks, but obviosuly I can get in here, but I cannot get my regular mail, because my caps lock ( hi - lo ) keys do not work, why does the caps lock work in TN but not elsewhere ?"?

 

[PROSPECTORMIKEL]

thanks, but obviosuly I can get in here, but I cannot get my regular mail, because my caps lock ( hi - lo ) keys do not work, why does the caps lock work in TN but not elsewhere ?"?

Jose, if you are on your phone [emoji390], you may need to double tap the shift key.

If all else fails, and you cannot get it reset, you may need to turn the phone off and back on, to reset the keyboard.

That is generally the “fix-all” for my iPhone.
It saves me time and a headache 🤕!

I hope that you can get it fixed soon.
We get a little lost, when you aren’t here.

I think that most of us suffer from the “follow the crowd mentality “, we wind up walking the same old circle [emoji778]️, until something happens...!

#/;0{>:~

 

[Real of Tayopa]

this nay function nicely, thanls