Re: OT: Fun things to do with Mercury - Any?

Jeff Wisnia wrote:

>> I can still remember the excess silver/mercury
>> amalgam rolling around in my mouth as the dentist
>> filled my teeth. The last time I went to the
>> dentist, she removed a cracked silver filling
>> and used a clever rubber shield to catch the
>> metal.

> Yeah, my dentist was bitching that the authorities here in Taxachusetts
> made him install a filtering system into which he had to connect the
> drains from all his "spit sinks" .... and have the loaded up filters
> disposed of by a HazMat company. Seems they were worried about whatever
> bits of fresh or ground out fillings may not get trapped by that rubber
> shield thing you mentioned.

I had a dentist talk it down, too. I attributed it to exposure to other
people doing the same, and enlightened self-interest.

Every chemical reaction has a rate constant and an equilibrium. If some
process assures that Hg moving from the amalgam to the surroundings is
removed (water table?) then more will be released.

And is, apparently. Hence the Hg in fish. It's present there in
"organic" form, having been methylated somewhere along its path of
migration down the poop-soup and finding its way into the ocean and the
food-cycle.

> Funny, I thought that once the mercury was amalgamed with silver to make
> a filling it would be trapped there forever. I guess the acids and stuff
> in a landfill are stronger than wot's in yer mouth.

I wonder about this one as well. Dismissal of toxicity because of low
vapor pressure is predicated on the absense of any concentrative
process, and doesn't consider that an equilibrium / rate constant
process may be present. For example, if there's a nerve sitting under
the filling, collecting Hg on its membranes, converting to "organic",
passing it up the axonic transport mechanisms to the cell body, and from
there into the trigeminal ganglion... I think looking for associations
with related structures in the brain (hypothalamus, pituitary, other
thingies associated with the TGG) might be informative. There may even
be enough computational oomph available to do such a complex analysis.

er
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