wens i wasa kid i played with the shiny purdy stuff all the time i never did me no harm

In interviewing the woman, he said, firefighters learned the woman's boyfriend had given the children a jar of mercury as a gift about a month ago.

More subtle than dropping them off a bridge, I guess..

sidmind, I did done that plus I eaten paint chips fo breffis. no did mees no harm eitha.

Someone gave me a jar of Uranus. It stunk.

Chariset: More subtle than dropping them off a bridge, I guess..

Get outta my head!

I used to break open thermometers just to play with the mercury. I loved it.

sidmind: wens i wasa kid i played with the shiny purdy stuff all the time i never did me no harm

mE neethair

The kids only had the mercury because Santa did not bring them the Bag O' Glass they wanted.

One time when my father was a poor child living during the great depression he collected mercury in a jar and sold it.

I remember playing with the little quicksilver game when I was a kid. A drop of mercury in a plastic maze.

I also remember sleeping on the back window ledge of the '71 Oldsmobile Delta 88 on family trips.

Kids today are a bunch of pansies.

Sucks when nowadays you have to call hazmat to clean up a broken compact fluorescent light bulb.

I love the smell of mercury in the morning.

Sounds like these parents were trying to out-Chinese the Chinese.

I forgot to add that he grew up normally with no harm from the mercury collection.

darkhorse23 - I used to break open thermometers just to play with the mercury. I loved it.

Me too... I can distinctly remember pushing the beads around in the bathroom sink and scooping them into my hand and watching them roll around on my palm.

I've always wondered how many years I've shaved off my life in my childhood ignorance... (seriously, anyone know?)

Then again, given the extent of my childhood stupidity, the fact that I made it past 13 is really amazing in itself, so all subsequent years have really been gravy anyway.

More subtle than dropping them off a bridge, I guess..



Discussion over

I had a jar of mercury...

but I ated it.

Well you can't spell "high" without Hg!

The store must have run out of these:

quick silver was WATER man!!!
and I played with it once
I guess I'll know soon enough

Did it come with Bag-O-Glass? Or maybe a Johnny Spaceman?

i done played wif mercury lotz wen yung, and grajitated MIT with 4.8!

I broke a thermometer open when I was younger to roll around little balls of mercury (not eat it, like many other kids would be wont to do at that age) but alas, my mother stepped in, preventing a slight case of the shakes, and a slightly below "genius" level IQ.

Frank Zappa played with it as a kid. He turned out OK, I guess.

In my high school science lab they had a (guestimating from memory) 2 liter jar of mercury. Used to be a display and learning item. It was a regular plaything when I was a kid as well.

Plus like farkuufarkinfark I remember lying in the rear window of the car most of the way from Seattle to LA.

/you may want to stay off my lawn, it's covered in mercury

I_Lost_My_Other_Username - I forgot to add that he grew up normally with no harm from the mercury collection.

How do you know? Mercury is a cumulative poison, and it can cause damage to the central nervous system. He might have been stupider his whole life than he would have been otherwise.

Same goes for lead.

farkuufarkinfark: I remember playing with the little quicksilver game when I was a kid. A drop of mercury in a plastic maze.

I also had one of those things. It was fun at first to get that drop of mercury into the center of the maze without causing it to break into smaller droplets, but after a while the mercury seemed to break up into droplets and stay broken up. Pretty unfortunate.

Of course, I just broke the toy open and poured the mercury into my brother's cereal bowl one day, which explains why he's a music teacher these days.

/I keed, I keed.

Mercury won't hurt you if you don't ingest it. People just overreact to the stuff. I have a jar I used to keep at the lab I work at full of Mercury from broken thermometers.

farkuufarkinfark: I remember playing with the little quicksilver game when I was a kid. A drop of mercury in a plastic maze.


I had one of those too. Bought it at a garage sale. I wonder where it went.

/Confiscated, probably

All I can say is, wtf?

Either the boyfriend was amazingly stupid or he was trying to kill the kids. You don't just go to Walmart and buy a Big Jar O' Mercury (Fun For The Whole Family!) in the toy aisle. And everyone knows that isn't nearly as fun as the Box Of Scorpions or Glow-in-the-dark Uranium Pencil Case.

He fails at subtlety - cheap-looking imported toys would have been far more subtle and economical. Either way, child services needs to investigate this.

In fact, it's gaseous form is supposed to be the most dangerous. I'll check out MSDS to make sure...

We had to leave the science lab once, because the teacher found an old mercury thermometer.

Oh the joys of over reacting

TheCynic: In fact, it's gaseous form is supposed to be the most dangerous. I'll check out MSDS to make sure...

its. If I see an angry flower, I'll start boiling my Mercury jar.

I seem to remember, and I think it was in National Geographic, a picture of a kid posing for the camera on his back and floating in a vat of hundreds of gallons of mercury demonstrating his buoyancy in the liquid.

Was in the 80's sometime.

Many happy memories of the dentist's as a kid, where the utensils tray always had little gobs of mercury on it. He gave me some to play with once.

wanted for questioning

Found one of some guy. Different pic, tho.

Chariset: More subtle than dropping them off a bridge, I guess..

Thread over. Winner.

That happened about 20 miles from where I sit right now. (The guy who threw his four babies off the Dauphin Island, AL bridge.) They had him in a bulletproof vest in court.

Several people, including me, wish they would just release him to the masses.

TheCynic: Mercury won't hurt you if you don't ingest it. People just overreact to the stuff. I have a jar I used to keep at the lab I work at full of Mercury from broken thermometers.

The problem with kids is that they'll play with stuff (including hazardous stuff) without washing their hands afterward, and then go eat lunch. The article also didn't state how old the children were - little kids put stuff in their mouths ALL THE TIME.

It also states in the article that the reason there was an investigation in the first place was because a doctor had stated that the children suffered from mercury poisoning - so I guess it's not so safe for children to play with in large, jar-sized quantities after all.

I_Lost_My_Other_Username: I forgot to add that he grew up normally with no harm from the mercury collection.

Maybe it affected his offspring though.

TheCynic: In fact, it's gaseous form is supposed to be the most dangerous. I'll check out MSDS to make sure...

I guess it vaporizes pretty easily. Still, trying to imagine what kind of person would give a jar of that to a kid. They were, after all, showing signs of mercury poisoning, so they seemed to have found ways to ingest it.

And yeah, I knew lots of kids who had mercury at one point of another, bringing it to school, etc. Each one of them was a dick to me and wouldn't give me any to throw around (whew). I've occasionally thought about finding out what happened to them, but how do you find a guy named Richard Ramirez? (Not THAT one, either.)

Neko_Kawaii: We had to leave the science lab once, because the teacher found an old mercury thermometer.

Oh the joys of over reacting

There was somewhere (it was on Fark even, I think) where someone broke a thermometer in a science class. It caused the entire wing of the school to be evacuated and hazmat called in and all sorts of hoopla, and it turned out to be an alcohol thermometer. Lots of amusement there.

Mt. Honkey
How do you know?
Circumstantial evidence. He grew up to be smarter and more successful than my paternal uncles. He is also very active for a man nearing 75.

I suppose the mercury could have caused him some damage in the CNS.

nurfy: TheCynic: Mercury won't hurt you if you don't ingest it. People just overreact to the stuff. I have a jar I used to keep at the lab I work at full of Mercury from broken thermometers.

The problem with kids is that they'll play with stuff (including hazardous stuff) without washing their hands afterward, and then go eat lunch. The article also didn't state how old the children were - little kids put stuff in their mouths ALL THE TIME.

It also states in the article that the reason there was an investigation in the first place was because a doctor had stated that the children suffered from mercury poisoning - so I guess it's not so safe for children to play with in large, jar-sized quantities after all.

I wasn't saying kids should play with the stuff, only an adult could really appreciate the fun to be had with it. Especially when you're in a lab full of fun toys to play with.

What I was getting at how people evacuate entire blocks because a kid breaks a thermometer. Mercury's boiling point is 674.11 degress F. So it doesn't exactly vaporize easily. People just have to fear EVERYTHING!

When I was a kid my dad had a small jar of the stuff. Would roll it all over quarters and make them nice and shiney.

TheCynic: Mercury's boiling point is 674.11 degress F. So it doesn't exactly vaporize easily. People just have to fear EVERYTHING!

I had no idea! I really thought it was less stable. All I know is that I am a little spooked when I see how The Man reacts when someone drops a thermometer and I think about how much mercury kids my age were able to get their hands on. It always was disposed of by throwing it against a wall and getting that nifty "clack" sound.

farkuufarkinfark: Sucks when nowadays you have to call hazmat to clean up a broken compact fluorescent light bulb.

From the EnergyStar web page, you can see instructions for cleanup that can be performed by the general public, though it takes a couple more steps. There is no need to call the HazMat team or pay $2000. That legand was a Fox News generated hoax, taking some things out of context.

Dis "Jar 'O Mercury" is a very popular item.

You don't eveacuate people, you evacuate the building. To evacuate a family would be to give them all enemas. Don't you watch The Wire, subby?