JJ wrote:
Richard Clark wrote:

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 01:52:22 +0000 (UTC),
wrote:

Utter nonsense.



Hi Jim,

I've performed work with Battelle Centers for Public Health Research &
Evaluation and this very matter has been studied to record and verify
every statement I've offered.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC


Well, I used to play with blobs of mercury a lot when I was a kid and it
has never eeefffffecttted (snort)mmmmeee a (slobber) biiiittt.


Good one, JJ! 8^)

Mercury isn't very harmful by that route of exposure. You could polish
quite a few dimes if you like, and not suffer much if any damage through
skin absorption.

But!

Inhaling the fumes is another thing entirely. Mercurey poisoning has
been known about for a long time now. Daggureotypists in the early
1800's often suffered from mercury poisoning as they purposely fumed the
image plates to develop the images, producing a silver amalgam on the
surface in accordance with how much it had been exposed to light. A
beautiful but deadly process.

The feltmaking process used to use mercury as a preservative, and the
saying "mad as a hatter" was coined for a reason.

And yet we still have people today that think that caution in handling
mercury is some kind of "liberal" plot or something.

- Mike KB3EIA -

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 15:34:36 -0400, Mike Coslo wrote:

Inhaling the fumes is another thing entirely. Mercurey poisoning has
been known about for a long time now. Daggureotypists in the early
1800's often suffered from mercury poisoning as they purposely fumed the
image plates to develop the images, producing a silver amalgam on the
surface in accordance with how much it had been exposed to light. A
beautiful but deadly process.

The feltmaking process used to use mercury as a preservative, and the
saying "mad as a hatter" was coined for a reason.

And yet we still have people today that think that caution in handling
mercury is some kind of "liberal" plot or something.

Over time, it is a self-correcting problem.

Holding it in your hands is more of an issue if
A) you have some sort of wound, and some could contact your
bloodstream, or more likely
B) if you do not _thoroughly_ clean it off your hands before touching
food, rubbing your eyes, smoking a ciggie, etc.

Happy trails,
Gary (net.yogi.bear)
------------------------------------------------
at the 51st percentile of ursine intelligence

Gary D. Schwartz, Needham, MA, USA
Please reply to: garyDOTschwartzATpoboxDOTcom

None of this means you should get your panties in a wad because there is
a mercury wetted relay in the house.

In the mid 80s I was involved in the start up of a 100KW photovoltaic
demonstration project. I worked for an electric utility, and they wanted to
show how great amorphous silicon solar cells were, so they could manufacture
and sell them.
The PV array was capable of 300VDC at around 350 amps at high noon on the 4th
of July in the deep south. The array fed 4 25KW inverters which converted all
that DC into 480 VAC 60HZ which was put on the power grid.
The interrupters, or circuit breakers to the inverters were Mercury wetted
contactors. The guy that designed the inverters used the AC interrupting
rating of the contactors. The PV array was capable of more than double the DC
interrupting rating of the contactors resulting in 4 exploded Mercury wetted
contactors. The inverters had problems which resulted in full load rejection
during start up.
Well, the exploded contactors produced an abundance of mercury vapor as well
as little blobs of the stuff all over the floor in the inverter building. This
just about closed down the whole 1.4 million project, because a lot of folks
got their panties in a wad. As for me, I went around sucking it up with a
suction tube, putting it in a bottle for future use in antenna projects.
73 Gary N4AST

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 21:24:26 GMT, Gary S. Idontwantspam@net wrote:

Holding it in your hands is more of an issue if
A) you have some sort of wound, and some could contact your
bloodstream, or more likely

Mercury can be forced through a solid plate of steel. Such is its
ability to migrate through barriers.

B) if you do not _thoroughly_ clean it off your hands before touching
food, rubbing your eyes, smoking a ciggie, etc.

Hi Gary,

I just attended a Nanotech seminar presentation 4 hours ago on "The
Collapse of Langmuir Monolayers" that showed the human body has
roughly 2M² of skin surface area, OR 100M² of Lung surface area, OR
300M² of Gastro Intestinal surface area. The later two have a
monomolecular air/water interface - the Langmuir layer.

The decay products of nuclear breakdown (the electron emission) is no
hazard due to its inability to puncture the dermal layer - inside the
body it leads to chromosomal breakdowns that gives rise to cancerous
growths. Same vector, two different paths separated by lack of
caution in the errant belief about exposure levels leads to grief.
[Another lesson learned in close proximity to the Boomers, and 24
Nuclear warheads stored within 10 feet of my workbench aboard ship.]

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC

"Richard Clark" wrote
Another point of toxicity. Because the nuclear "Boomers" contained a
closed loop environmental system, ALL such batteries were banned from
the boat irrespective of their need in ANY equipment. We had to make
do with substitutes and jury rig our own holders or means to provide a
voltage for key equipment that would work fine on surface craft.

What are you talking about Richard? Just what kind of "jury rigging" did you
do on "your" boomer?

Jack
Launch Operations Supervisior, Weapons Power PO, QA Inspector
USS Andrew Jackson
SSBN 619 (Gold) 1983-1987

On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 19:58:17 -0400, "Jack Painter"
wrote:

"Richard Clark" wrote
Another point of toxicity. Because the nuclear "Boomers" contained a
closed loop environmental system, ALL such batteries were banned from
the boat irrespective of their need in ANY equipment. We had to make
do with substitutes and jury rig our own holders or means to provide a
voltage for key equipment that would work fine on surface craft.

What are you talking about Richard? Just what kind of "jury rigging" did you
do on "your" boomer?

Jack
Launch Operations Supervisior, Weapons Power PO, QA Inspector
USS Andrew Jackson
SSBN 619 (Gold) 1983-1987


Hi Jack,

They were ALL my Boomers (COMSUBLANT Charleston). USS Holland AS-32
Fleet Electronics Calibration Laboratory (Repair Services division).

Battery holders for test equipment that took only one particular
shaped coin cell (the mercury cells in commercial gear). They were
usually bias voltages for specialized test equipment (maybe torpedo
sonar test sets, but recollection is hazy in the particulars; coulda
been crypto gear with RAM). I am well aware that mods were frowned
on, but our shop had special dispensations from the Pope. No one
argued authority with us who wanted to ship out (and we did get our
quota of those who "just had to" lose a fight).

I do know it wasn't for the nuclear pile sensor. They hauled me outa
the rack at midnight to take over measuring at least 10 GigOhms
because all they could muster up was a reading of 20X10^9 Ohms. I was
puzzled why they needed less and they explained "their" dictionary
described Billion as a million, million. I told them that was the
british Billion but only after proving it to their Captain - the sub
wasn't going to cast off without that check item and there was a lot
of brass looking over our shoulders as I balanced the bridge. As it
was in the common passage way to Sherwood Forest, someone invariable
had to clamber past and would peg the meter for a minute or two.
After about an hour I got back to my rack. I really did like the
Diesel Boats better.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC,
ET1, HMFIC, Uncle Sam's Canoe Club, 1968-1975

Salt water is a better idea,
not near as harmful,
still a liquid,
easy to mix one up at Home
and extremely low cost, (at least the salt water)
more transparent


"Reg Edwards" wrote in message
...
Why not use salt water. Anything will work.

Loss resistance would not be too bad because skin depth increases with
conductor resistivity relative to copper.

"Richard Clark" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 13 Apr 2004 19:58:17 -0400, "Jack Painter"
wrote:

"Richard Clark" wrote
Another point of toxicity. Because the nuclear "Boomers" contained a
closed loop environmental system, ALL such batteries were banned from
the boat irrespective of their need in ANY equipment. We had to make
do with substitutes and jury rig our own holders or means to provide a
voltage for key equipment that would work fine on surface craft.

What are you talking about Richard? Just what kind of "jury rigging" did
you
do on "your" boomer?

Jack
Launch Operations Supervisior, Weapons Power PO, QA Inspector
USS Andrew Jackson
SSBN 619 (Gold) 1983-1987


Hi Jack,

They were ALL my Boomers (COMSUBLANT Charleston). USS Holland AS-32
Fleet Electronics Calibration Laboratory (Repair Services division).

Battery holders for test equipment that took only one particular
shaped coin cell (the mercury cells in commercial gear). They were
usually bias voltages for specialized test equipment (maybe torpedo
sonar test sets, but recollection is hazy in the particulars; coulda
been crypto gear with RAM). I am well aware that mods were frowned
on, but our shop had special dispensations from the Pope. No one
argued authority with us who wanted to ship out (and we did get our
quota of those who "just had to" lose a fight).

I do know it wasn't for the nuclear pile sensor. They hauled me outa
the rack at midnight to take over measuring at least 10 GigOhms
because all they could muster up was a reading of 20X10^9 Ohms. I was
puzzled why they needed less and they explained "their" dictionary
described Billion as a million, million. I told them that was the
british Billion but only after proving it to their Captain - the sub
wasn't going to cast off without that check item and there was a lot
of brass looking over our shoulders as I balanced the bridge. As it
was in the common passage way to Sherwood Forest, someone invariable
had to clamber past and would peg the meter for a minute or two.
After about an hour I got back to my rack. I really did like the
Diesel Boats better.

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC,
ET1, HMFIC, Uncle Sam's Canoe Club, 1968-1975

Richard,

The Tender crews in Scotland hated all submariners, no exceptions. We
thought they especially hated us but I think it was universal. Maybe because
when it was time to get underway we used questionable tactics to separate
the materials we needed from the Tender's inventory w/o always using the
proper channels, shall we say. If they could've put mercury in our coffee
they would've.

73's

Jack
'slept three feet from a loaded bird and 30 feet from the teakettle.

Mike Coslo wrote:

Good one, JJ! 8^)

Mercury isn't very harmful by that route of exposure. You could polish
quite a few dimes if you like, and not suffer much if any damage through
skin absorption.

But!

Inhaling the fumes is another thing entirely. Mercurey poisoning has
been known about for a long time now. Daggureotypists in the early
1800's often suffered from mercury poisoning as they purposely fumed the
image plates to develop the images, producing a silver amalgam on the
surface in accordance with how much it had been exposed to light. A
beautiful but deadly process.

The feltmaking process used to use mercury as a preservative, and the
saying "mad as a hatter" was coined for a reason.

And yet we still have people today that think that caution in handling
mercury is some kind of "liberal" plot or something.

- Mike KB3EIA -

Umm, no, most people today think standing over a vat of heated murcury or
chewing on something impregnated with mercury is not a very good idea.

That doesn't mean you ignore the hazards or go screaming in terror just
because you see mercury.


--
Jim Pennino

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