I, and many others of my age, have played with mercury as a kid in the
1940s.
Rub it on a coin and it shined it up.
I'm not sure, but we might have even tasted it.
I remember busting the long florescent bulbs.
There is nothing wrong with me now.


Me too. Many times. I think that my first few Gilbert chemistry sets
even contained a small vial of mercury. I also played closely with a
"nuclear energy" set as a young teenager that included several sources
of alpha, beta, and gamma emitters. I also probably fried my feet to a
crisp in the shoe store fluoroscopes in the early 1950s.


I'm in my mid-60s with no evidence of radiation damage or mercury
poisioning.

This is not to say that mercury and ionizing radiation are not
dangerous, or that what we did is safe. But it seems that the current
hyperventilation over avoiding mercury levels that are only a small
fraction of what we experienced might be an over-reaction.