"Christopher Tidy" wrote in message
...
Joseph Gwinn wrote:
In article ,
Christopher Tidy wrote:


ATP* wrote:


Some idiot science teacher in a local middle school sprinkled a small
amount of mercury on a lab table to show the kids how the drops roll.
That episode cost the school district a few thousand dollars in
monitoring and cleanup. If a quart of mercury was dropped, there would
be a financial disaster.

This is sad, and quite unnecessary. You pick up all the drops, and check
it isn't spilt under the bench, and you'll be fine. Anything remaining
which is too small to see is insufficient to cause harm. The biggest
danger is if you get a hidden spill, which doesn't get cleaned up.


In the 1960s, the standard lab cleanup approach for spilled mercury was
to sprinkle flowers of sulfur on the floor, sweep it around, wait a
while, and vacuum it all up. One can do this periodically to catch
undetected spills, as the sulfur is cheap and harmless.

The sulphur is a common method, although I have read at least once that it
is ineffective. I would be interested to know if this is true.

The vacuum cleaner is a really bad idea. It will just help to vaporise any
remaining liquid mercury.

Best wishes,

Chris

Sweeping is a bad idea. It breaks up the droplets.

Here are some recommendations from EPA. They sound a lot less draconian than
some of the things we've heard from other sources:

http://www.epa.gov/mercury/spills/index.htm#whatnever

--
Ed Huntress