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Surprise! More Than Twice As Much Mercury In Environment As Thought
sciencehabit writes The most comprehensive estimate of mercury released into the environment is putting a new spotlight on the potent neurotoxin. By accounting for mercury in consumer products, such as thermostats, and released by industrial processes, the calculations more than double previous tallies of the amount of mercury that has entered the environment since 1850. The analysis also reveals a previously unknown spike in mercury emissions during the 1970s, caused largely by the use of mercury in latex paint.
Where did this mercury come from originally? Aren't we really just sending it home?
Compared the coal-fired electric plant, that's nothing.
The whole issue makes me mad as a hatter.
Where is "Environment"? I've never heard of a place by that name. Or was the headline about ambient mercury in "the environment"?
The good news is that finding out that there is twice as much of it around means that it is half as harmful as we were thinking it was, assuming the retarded LNT model preferred by statists everywhere.
See that "Preview" button?
A bit of calculation will show that CFLs are likely to save more mercury by decreasing the amount of coal burned, even if you smashed each one on the ground at the end of life. A huge fraction of anthropogenic environmental mercury comes from burning coal. Overall, they are almost certainly a net reduction in anthropogenic mercury. I don't think they're great, but they are a reasonable stop-gap solution until LEDs take over.
Blame China. They don't have scrubbers at most of their plants.
Life is not for the lazy.
I would be more surprised if we found significant amounts of Neptune, Uranus or Pluto...
Blame $EASY_TARGET for hundreds of years of humans everywhere not giving a fuck.
Not much:
http://earthtechling.com/2011/...
5 thousandths of a gram is a lot of mercury for 1 cf bulb. 720,000 tons of mercury amounts to about 100grams per human, so cf bulbs are likely responsible for less than 100th of 1% of the total mercury pollution.
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Except CFLs are regulated to have less than 2.5mg of mercury in and some will no doubt have a lot less.
CFLs prevent more mercury from being released into the environment via coal than they release: ...
How much Mercury is in Compact Fluorescent ( CFL ) bulbs , watch
Of course LEDs are better, do you have an argument against those?
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Whilst I'm not condoning China's pollution record, most of their industrialisation capacity-wise has been this last decade. The article shows that mercury has been entering the environment for over a century with the amounts being released in the year 1900 being similar to that released in the year 2000.
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and yet "we need to" fine the solar plants that are frying a few birds while all the mercury from coal plants probably kills three orders of magnitude more.
I know, let's protest the solar plant and then head out to KFC for an afterparty. We'll toast to the bureaucrats.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
one can produce elmental mercury from ore with alchemy. At least that's what I'd assume you'd call it.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
So I'll get to the nut of of it all. The EPA has been hell-bent on shutting down US industry and other green initiatives to tax us to the poor house. So the natural alternative is to offshore that production to the cheapest part of the world possible that can do the job; that's China. So here's an idea: If the EPA is serious about cleaning up our pollution, how about a portion of that "sin tax" goes toward purchasing scrubbing technology for China (verified and installed, not some Chinese slush fund that would get exploited by the corrupted) rather then telling us what light bulbs and TVs we can and can't buy.
Life is not for the lazy.
Have a look at the history of when American coal plants started installing scrubbers and figure out when they reached 10%, 20%, 30% of plants etc, old & new, that were properly outfitted.
You'll find there's more than enough blame to go around.
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I blame all that mercurochrome my mom put on my cuts when I was little.
Also, the 48" straight florescent bulbs that everyone use to have in their garage and above their workbench contained 85 mg of mercury (per bulb) up through 1990; are now limited (!) to 25 mg. Haven't heard any complaints about those from the rolling coal set.
sPh
Coal is messy stuff, with all sorts of wierd elements in it. hundreds of millions of tons of coal is burned each year. Most of those elements are not toxic in very low doses in the environment, so we don't care about them. Directly burning coal can be quite messy, and make air difficult to breathe, like secondhand smoke. Thanks to modern pulverized coal boilers, and scubbers, a lot of the worst of coal has been tamed. America made of bunch of changes in the 70s. China has been moving to modern coal power plants with scrubbers.
There is nothing anti-science about having slaves and
Of course that is anti-science. Any economist would tell you that it is much cheaper to just get rid of minimum wage and overtime laws and then put your workers in a company town than it is to import, purchase and maintain slaves.
Different kind of Mercury. The kind is most industrial is the kind that your body can't get rid of, so it just builds up. The kind in shots/jabs is a kind your body can expel quite quickly.
I'd certainly support anti-pollution tariffs. Regarding that, the WTO, TTIP, NAFTA etc trade treaties are all rabidly against tariffs, no matter what they try to protect (anti-dumping tariffs are allowed).
Waterfox - a Firefox fork with legacy extension support, security updates and better privacy by default.
From the (maximum of) 5 milligrams of mercury? What did you do? Break the lamp very carefully and then snort the contents?
Blame $EASY_TARGET for hundreds of years of humans everywhere not giving a fuck.
The neurological effects of mercury were not understood hundreds of years ago, nor did people understand that burning coal emitted it. So their behavior was out of ignorance. We know far more today, so China's emissions are not as excusable. You can buy thermometers with a bulb of mercury at any Chinese drugstore. The long term economic costs of neurological damage will far outweigh the few fen they are saving today.
Were the latex paint people jealous of the oil based lead paint people and all the attention they were getting? Lead and mercury have been known to be hazardous for decades prior to the 70s. Why in a million years would they think that it was a good idea. Minimally with the late 60s and 70s being a huge eco movement time any company would think twice before potentially attracting the attention of a combination of the health authorities, the eco crowd, and shows like 60 minutes.
I wonder if the huge crime spikes of the 60's and 70's had this mercury as another contributing factor?
Heavy metal poisoning does not work that way. You might want to pop to your doctors and get a CT scan, because that sounds more like a brain tumour than any short term effects from mercury.
... ca. 1953, my daddy worked in a oil refinery and he'd bring home small sample bottles full of mercury.
We puzzled at it, amazed at how heavy the bottle was and stuff. We poured some in our hands and rolled it around.
Then we coated dimes and pennies with it to make them look like silver and played with those.
Fast-forward 25 years and I'm an instrument man in an oil refinery lab and I'm calibrating a pneumatic gauge with a manometer that uses lots of mercury and I get a case of the dumbass and blow mercury all the way to the ceiling, all over counter tops and on the flour.
They evacuated the entire lab and sent in the hazmat team and stuff.
It's funny how things change with education and I never experienced any fallout from the big white letter E on my keyboard with the bluetooth that clasps to the ballpoint pen of my mother's daisy.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Any or all of which could be explained by the manner in which the bulb was broken and which body part was involved.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
The long term negative economic and health effects of coal have been known about in the US for at least a few decades, and besides some cosmetic changes and this public relations "scrubbers!" effort, we haven't done a thing about it. In fact , our government has done everything it can do hide the fact that people are being poisoned across generations with mercury, because so many energy execs and owners, including certain coal-country billionaire siblings are big contributors, for and against politicians.
http://www.ucsusa.org/scientific_integrity/abuses_of_science/mercury-emissions.html
You are welcome on my lawn.
Or did you think Lincoln was a Democrat?
"I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
As soon as I heard that mercury was dangerous, I threw all my thermometers and thermostats in the garbage.
Have gnu, will travel.
Surprise! More Than Twice As Much Mercury In Environment As Thought
Here are a couple more Slashdot headlines in this new style:
Fuck's sake! Facebook's Auto-Play Videos Chew Up Expensive Data Plans
About Bloody Time! 3 Decades Later, Finnair Pilots Report Dramatic Close Encounter With a Missile
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
besides some cosmetic changes and this public relations "scrubbers!" effort, we haven't done a thing about it.
Nonsense. Scrubbers are not perfect, but they catch a lot of mercury and other pollutants. Furthermore, America has reduced the percentage of electricity generated by coal, and this percentage will continue to drop, since no new coal plants are under construction. With plenty of cheap shale gas, it is unlikely any more coal power plants will ever be built.
Now there is a lot more mercury available to be put, in elemental form, into vaccines.
This posting is provided 'AS IS' without warranty of any kind, implied or otherwise.
From the (maximum of) 5 milligrams of mercury? What did you do? Break the lamp very carefully and then snort the contents?
I might as well have done. No, I was trying to remove the dead bulb from an overhead lamp when it shattered in my face. Unfortunately, it was in my office at home so I had to keep working in that environment (trying to meet a daily word-count). Even with the windows and doors open it still affected me for several hours. Not pleasant, though it seems to have been temporary.
The stupendous of money lost and and used to cleanup up America's pollution could be done for a lot less in China and yield better results. The term is called "law of diminishing returns".
Life is not for the lazy.
It's always cheap until the externalities get figured in. We thought coal was cheap until we started paying the price as a society for increased crime, increased poverty, increased health costs from mercury everywhere (also, the mercury in gasoline). Mining country won't be normal for several more generations to come thanks to King Coal. You know who never pays the cost for these "cheap" sources of energy? The people who profit the most from them.
Now, the "clean, safe, and too cheap to meter" fuel du jour is "shale" and "fracking". Until we start talking about the real cost of things, any discussion of the way we get energy will be seriously defective and we'll keep screwing up.
You are welcome on my lawn.
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If KFC could just use the Boeing Chicken Launching Cannon during Solar Plant working hours, it could be a tourist attraction and a place to get a Barbequed Impact Chicken sandwich. Bring the family!
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
True dat. I was in Jr High (grades 7-9) in the 70s and I spent a lot of time in chemistry class pushing mercury droplets around with my finger.
#2, Silver Mining. It turns out mountains don't come labelled as "gold" and "silver-only". As world affluence increases, demand for gold and silver increases. Today, affluent trapped from filters at gold mines produces more mercury than mercury mines. But the only mines "trapping" any mercury are in regulated western economies... most gold mining is in unregulated forests.
Lamps, by the way, have jackshit mercury, less than a fraction of what they had when lamp recycling got started. Billions of dollars are being spent "recycling" lamps which have barely any mercury in them.
At least the recycled mercury saves the environment, right? Oh. Nope. Read the great journalist John Fialka on WSJ 2006. Most of the mercury recovered from the recycling went to alluvial gold mining in Amazon and Congo river basins. http://online.wsj.com/news/art...
I'm an environmentalist, but environmentalists 3.0 need to recognize past mistakes, and correct them, the same as engineers and software coders are expected to do.
Gently reply
I like to know a little bit about where citations are coming from, you know?
From the Wikipedia entry on the website where all of your citations come from:
I'm not sure the blog site of a climate change denying weatherman and Fox News favorite is a solid source of information, but who knows? Anything's possible when there's money at stake.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Right, Mercury is horribly toxic, and releasing it in the environment is bad. But where do we get the mercury first?
I guess it comes from the environment itself, which suggests some kind of mercury cycle. It was there before as a reasonably harmful compound, perhaps we can ensure it returns to this state?
From your description it sounds like it wasn't the mercury so much as receiving a full dose of Obecalp.
Did you seek medical attention?
Awesome - thanks for the information.
I hate digital fever thermometers - when I need one every five or ten years, the battery is dead (and the very reason I want to take my temperature is the same reason I don't want, nor to people in the outside world want me, to go out at 3AM to find and buy a new one or a new battery). Fortunately, I still have a "backup" mercury thermometer that's close to 40 years old - but I've wondered where to buy a backup for the backup should it meet an untimely demise.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
He didn't mention -- he fell off the ladder while removing the bulb and fell 12 feet (cathedral ceilings!) and hit his head on the edge of his Steelcase desk from the 50's (the ones that a lot of Cop shows have on the set). But, I'm pretty sure it was the mercury that had that remarkable effect, not the anxiety of if mercury was harmful or the concussion and blood loss.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
You don't have batteries at home?
Keeping a few charged aaa batteries in the house is useful not just for digital thermometers. They are also used for other things which you may need too.
After all the mercury that was spilled in gold mining operations....
Rick B.
Not as big a deal as having it in the form of vapour - it's not even a huge deal in landfill unless there's enough water moving through to get it out of the landfill, or biological activity turning the metal into some pretty nasty stuff that can get into the food chain more easily. There's nothing immediately unsafe about an open container of mercury or blobs of it all over the floor from a broken thermometer - the problems arise when it can be breathed in or metabolised into something that's part of the food chain. Mark Twain had his hands deep in the stuff while gold mining with no signs of ill effects, but hatters went mad. That's the difference between it staying completely outside the body as a liquid that cannot penetrate and breathing the stuff in as part of a process involving heat.
Most consumer oral fever thermometers use a button cell battery of a size I don't keep around.
I keep lots of charged AA and AAA rechargeable batteries (Eneloop et al) around but that doesn't help me with the fever thermometers.
Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading
Scrubbers were not cosmetic. Ask someone who was paying attention in the US before 1970 to find out why, or ask someone in China today.
Things are not perfect but writing off a major improvement in air pollution as cosmetic is somewhat misleading and unrealistic to the point which can lead to doubts about understanding and honesty.
Nixon or even Daddy Bush are closer to being Democrats than Republicans in the current situation, let alone Lincoln.
It's a bit misleading to compare the political parties of back then to now since the values have changed so much.
Not as such. Metallic mercury is rare. It's a bit of work to get mercury out of various ores, many of which would probably be safe to crumble up and eat since stomach acid is not going to reduce it.
And you were present to see this but didn't call an ambulance?
There are some forms of heavy metal exposure that produce such symptoms and have near instantanious onsets. One account of such concerns a french soldier who poured and drank about 250 ml of wine passed through a 155 mm artillery piece barrel as part of a unit induction ceremony, and picked up a substantial Tungsten exposure. He had immediate onset of symptoms including seizures and rapid unconsiousness. All the symptoms mentioned by the parent poster are recognized for acute inhalation exposure to Mercury, but I'm running into paywalls trying to find out just how rapid their onset can be. Still the AC who generalized that heavy metal poisoning does not work that way is simply wrong, and is probably not picking up on the differences between gradual and rapid exposure, or inhalation vs ingestion, or both.
And about your sig: You'll take your insight where you find it, like everybody else. and you'll like it!
Who is John Cabal?
I can confirm that a broken CF bulb is nasty. I had one break while hot, it stank to the high heavens and also gave me a headache. Had to ventilate the room for hours. Given that mercury is odorless (pdf), I suspect some other chemical. In any case, if the cold bulbs have a similar odor I think it would be very unlikely for someone to get mercury poisoning from these, and there is also the matter of the mercury emitted by coal power plants to consider.
Overall I am pleased with CF bulbs, but one day hope to build a DC circuit with LEDs and battery backup for my lights.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
The Heartland Institute published Watts' preliminary report on weather station data, titled Is the U.S. Surface Temperature Record Reliable?.[12] Watts has been featured as a speaker at Heartland Institute's International Conference on Climate Change, for which he acknowledges receiving payment.[55]
Documents obtained from the Heartland Institute and made public in February 2012 reveal that the Institute had agreed to help Watts raise $88,000 to set up a website,(...)
So, paid for by a fine organization that, apart from the climate change thing, is also known for denying the health effects of second-hand tobacco smoke, promoting franking, and openly advocating free-market environmentalism? A likely story!
http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=sr... I have a couple of these for various reasons (where did i put it this time.....)
If you know anything about history it's the Republican party that freed the slaves and, "It emerged in 1854 to combat the Kansas–Nebraska Act, which threatened to extend slavery into the territories, and to promote more vigorous modernization of the economy." Democrats try to change history through repeated rhetoric saying what they want to be the truth and all the youth who get their news solely from Facebook or Twitter parrot their statements in a zombie-like monotone.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H...
Is this the case in the US? I know mercury can be used to seperate gold from the other rocks (rocks float but gold sinks I think), but that is only done in third world countries that don't know about better ways to do it. I didn't think it was from pulling the gold from the ground, I thought it was just one possible process for seperating the gold.
I don't know a lot about gold mining, but I think that is not true in the US at least.
Its used in small scale placer mining. You use a pan (or sluice) to separate the heavier material, gold, iron and such, from the lighter rocks, then you add mercury to the black stuff at the bottom of the pan. The mercury and gold combine into an almagram (sp?), much like the paste the dentist mixes up to put in your mouth. Then you heat and evaporate the mercury leaving the gold and perhaps some silver. Since mercury is expensive, usually you evaporate it in a kind of still so you can recapture it. Used to be quite common, not sure now but placer mining is still popular with people making a living from it..
Which also brings up the other use of mercury, making fillings and putting it into peoples teeth where it hopefully stays. Of course if you get cremated the mercury gets released into the environment.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inverted_totalitarianism
Fortunately, I still have a "backup" mercury thermometer that's close to 40 years old - but I've wondered where to buy a backup for the backup should it meet an untimely demise.
You should consider replacing it with a readily-available spirit thermometer, e.g. this one. Spirit thermometers have a smaller temperature range that they can measure than mercury thermometers, but are often more accurate over that range, and if you just want one for medical purposes, you're not interested in any temperatures outside a very narrow range anyway. Plus, when that untimely demise eventually happens, it won't create a health hazard that requires careful cleanup.
All the symptoms mentioned by the parent poster are recognized for acute inhalation exposure to Mercury, but I'm running into paywalls trying to find out just how rapid their onset can be.
At a concentration level similar to the ones you're likely to see in the few moments after breaking a lightbulb, symptoms of acute mercury inhalation exposure require "a few hours" of exposure to develop. The patients in this review each absorbed a dose similar to the complete mercury contents of a typical CFL; it seems unlikely that an accident of the type described would result in more than a few percent of this amount of absorption, as the instinctive response to the bulb breaking - closing your eyes and exhaling - will prevent most of the contaminants entering your system. Also, unless the lamp was turned on at the time it broke, it is unlikely that more than a small percentage of the mercury was in vapour form.
#2, Silver Mining. It turns out mountains don't come labelled as "gold" and "silver-only". As world affluence increases, demand for gold and silver increases.
Don't worry. It turns out that the cost of mercury is rising much faster than the cost of gold. Another decade or so of this, and it will be more economical for the gold miners just to sell their mercury stocks straight back to us.
Congratulations. Break just 149 more and you will have equivalent mercury exposure to eating one fish fillet. Reverse placebo effect anyone?
Hmmm....so they are promoting Congressional postal propaganda (franking)...those bastards!!
Oh, so you mean the EPA is requiring what used to be called "externalities" be paid by the industry involved instead of imposed as a health tax on the rest of Americans? Those bastards.
The irony of someone citing Wikipedia to show some other website is biased and inaccurate.
"I know your site sucksw because Wikipedia, where anyone can post anything, says so."
The difference is that Wikipedia has citations to actual sources that you can check yourself.
The people who accuse Wikipedia of bias never seem to point out what the bias is.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Mad as a hatter
Actually, it's all the non-compact fluorescent light bulbs. Nobody ever read the disposal instructions for those, and they're great for swinging around like light sabers, especially if you stand under a transmission line so the EM field lights them up.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
And of course the non-compact ones that have been in your kitchen for decades, you took those to the recycler too when they burned out, right?
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
Are you confusing leaded gasoline with mercury from coal emissions? Because I haven't yet heard of mercury being blamed for the rise of criminality in the twentieth century.
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
I don't know a lot about gold mining, but I think that is not true in the US at least.
We've been mining the USA for a lot longer than we've had an EPA. I live in Lake County, CA and I have an RO filter because there's a hell of a lot of stuff around here in the water which is harmful for three big reasons. The first reason is that the area is volcanic, the second is that it's agricultural, and the third is not just silver mining but also outright cinnabar mining. Luckily, I live on the side of the lake which is relatively clean. Clear Lake has a lot of thermal turnover, though...
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
" Scrubbers are not perfect, but they catch a lot of mercury and other pollutants."
Yup, and they dump them into ash ponds, which are toxic cesspits the power companies conveniently ignore until they burst their containment.
One burst last year in the southeastern USA. The environmental damage was significantly worse than Deepwater horizon.
There are 5000 _known_ ashponds of the same or larger size in the USA.
Catching the bad stuff and putting it somewhere is not the same as mitigating the overall problem.
I live in California where Hg occurs in nature and was used in extraction of gold from ores and has a latency in sediments shed from mining in the Mother Lode. USGS has been looking for the signature of Hg in sediments and it may be delayed by the mobilization process. More was applied to ores than has yet appeared in sediments. My source for the path of Hg in sediments comes from a video I saw authored by USGS in about 2000. I am sure that there are links to papers on the subject. Part of the problem of Hg in the environment in California is that its ores are found in the Coast Range and so it is a natural constituant of the environment. Most of the time it is pretty insoluable.
I mention this because that is what the chart in the link from the article seems to indicate. The spike in total Hg at 1970 and its elevated concentration is due in part to landfills, but the more recent uptick seems to be due to its mobilization in the atmosphere. This would coincide with the concern from USGS about its path in sediments. The metal is pretty insoluable, but conversion to its salts and organic versions are more volitile and take time, decades, to appear in the environment.
I'm not sure why I put the gasoline thing in there. I was drunk. It was the first Sunday of football season and was drinking gasoline with mercury in it.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yeah, I'm not ready to buy a power company telling us how great they are as proof that they're not dumping the scrubbed pollutants into ash ponds.
You are welcome on my lawn.
So, you don't believe there are external costs to things, like the cost of protecting the oil industry by fighting Middle Eastern wars?
Do you believe the cost of the Fukushima cleanup should be figured into the cost of the electricity the plant produced? Do you believe that there were any costs associated with lead being used in paint for decades?
Of course there are externalities. You are the first person I've even seen deny they exist.
You are welcome on my lawn.
From your description it sounds like it wasn't the mercury so much as receiving a full dose of Obecalp.
Did you seek medical attention?
Ho-ho-ho. Have an internet.
You should know better than to drink and post!
I'm not sure what specific problems are caused by mercury exposure, but lead from leaded gasoline has been correlated with the rise in crime during the twentieth century. To my knowledge, gasoline contains no significant amount of mercury, if any. I think most of our mercury exposure comes from seafood and coal plant emissions. Is mercury thought to be responsible for behavior problems, as well?
-- sudon't
Air-ride Equipped
Heh lol... looks like my autocorrect is the product of a right-wing conspiracy
Hmm, good enough reasons to consider appropriate precautions. And considering that we don't know what the safe lower exposure limit for mercury is (assuming that it's significantly different to the homeopathic concentration), that's going to need some careful thought.
Sorry, what's an "RO filter"? Run-Off? (I wouldn't have thought that snow-melt and rainfall from a clean roof would have picked up much ; unless you're horribly dusty, when you've got other issues to attend to.)
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Sorry, what's an "RO filter"?
Reverse osmosis, which uses water pressure both to push water through a plastic membrane (the osmosis part) but also to back-flush the filter. An "efficient" RO filter wastes about 10 parts of water for each 1 part filtered, but we have a well and a septic system so no harm done really.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Ah, got you. Still needs appreciable power, but being a continuous load, that's not a major issue. The water makers on board are RO too, feeding and washing a couple of hundred (very) sweaty bodies. But for big fresh water requirements (hundreds of cu. m. ) we bring in non-potable water on one of the flotilla boats.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"