Odd O'blography

Mercury Rising

Deb and I had breakfast with friends yesterday and we reminisced about things that used to be considered normal, but would freak people out today, like playing with mercury. I remember quite clearly that there was a small bottle of mercury on a shelf at my grandmother’s house. I think it was ‘liberated’ by one of my uncles when he worked in the underground copper mines in Butte, Montana. The thick glass bottle was rectangular rather than round, and it had a wire bail cap that kept the mercury safely sealed inside. The label was long gone so I don’t know if was originally used for liquor, patent medicine, or perhaps that was just the way mercury was packaged back then. The bottle looked old-fashioned to me even in 1967.

Liquid mercury is a fascinating thing for a ten-year-old, bright silver and mysteriously viscous as it flows back and forth. The most startling thing, though, is its weight. I don’t think that bottle contained more than six or eight fluid ounces, but it hefted like a five-pound sack of sugar. My uncle would smile when one of us kids would fail to pick it up on the first try. A really small kid might have to use both hands. And such a treasure was too difficult to resist, so I took a cue from my uncle and ‘borrowed’ a spoonful to show it to my fifth-grade friends.

Everyone was as impressed as I’d hoped, but my bottle wasn’t as secure as the one at grandma’s house. The mercury ‘escaped’ one afternoon as it was being passed around on the school bus. Soon, there were little beads of bright silver rolling up and down the grooves of the rubber mat in the aisle. Every time the bus slowed or went downhill, the beads rolled forward. They rolled back again with acceleration or an uphill climb. We all giggled hysterically for the rest of the trip that day. I couldn’t say anything to the bus driver, of course, and I’ve sometimes wondered if he ever figured out what was going on. Maybe he didn’t even notice, mercury is quite volatile, so it would have evaporated by the next morning. The only real evidence was the unseen damage to our bodies from the toxic mercury vapor.

Several years later, I learned out about the danger of mercury fumes when our high school science teacher decided to make a barometer from thin glass tubing and liquid mercury. He used a Bunsen burner to soften the glass tubing and bend it into a J shape. Then he put a dollop of mercury inside and closed off the short end by melting it with the Bunsen burner. The end result is an air bubble trapped in the short side of the J-tube that changes in volume depending on the outside air pressure in the long side. The level of the mercury in the short side can then be used as a barometric pressure gauge.

It took Mr. Foulis a number of tries to perfect his technique and he spilled mercury onto the lab bench once or twice as he worked. Heat from the Bunsen burner only exacerbated his exposure to the mercury vapor. By the time he developed a cough, nausea, and bleeding gums, it was already too late to take precautions. The cumulative effect of breathing toxic fumes over a span of several days landed him in the hospital. Fortunately, he recovered and returned to school a few weeks later with a truly convincing lesson about the dangers of mercury poisoning and the need for lab safety gear.

Today, this story reminds me of the woke movement. I'd certainly feel less guilty about exposing my classmates to toxic mercury if I'd never found out about the danger. On the other hand, awareness of the problem is the first step in protecting future kids from being poisoned. And systemic racism is like toxic mercury, the damage isn't obvious until it's already too late. It builds up in the very bones of our society until injustice is accepted as the norm. Treating the symptoms can take many years. Woke is just the first step in preventing damage to future generations.