2269 - Mercury vapors exposed

We all hear about the dangers of mercury vapors. Well seems a guy did a little study a few years back and made a video. The vapors weren't measured, just illuminated to show they actually exist. Here's the film makers comment that is posted with the video.


I made this video to show some of the phenomena surrounding this invisible poison called mercury vapor. It was actually rather difficult to find the proper fluorescent screen.

There are five scenes:

-vapor coming from a Petri dish
-squeezing a bottle of mercury
-vapor coming from a working sphygmomanometer
-covering the metal with water
-damaging a silver amalgam filling

The scenes with sphygmomanometer and the water might very well be the first such videos on the Web.

Regarding the silver amalgam, I've noticed now that it fumes slightly on video even before I scratched it. That's because I damaged it few hours before. It wasn't noticeable at the very moment of recording the video, but later showed up because of the digital enhancement. Fillings that aren't damaged do not fume even close to this.

Also, I want to explain that this video was not made to add more material to the New Age crusade against mercury. Although I understand and actually warn stupid and lazy people that mercury is an insidious poison, I am against paranoid practices such as messing with few stable dental fillings and BS "detox" treatments which can make your wallet sick, as well as you. There is no evidence that few small amalgam fillings in your mouth cause problems (if you have a mouthful  then the situation is different, of course), and I oppose that annoying scare which fills YouTube  too. And the danger from messing with injured teeth is greater than the danger from small amounts that leak out of 2-3 small fillings.

Mercury is really something that should be avoided whenever it's reasonable (let's say by installing Hg-free fillings), but one shouldn't be paranoid of small intakes, such as eating normal amounts of tuna etc.


Here's the video. There is no narration with the video, just music and some on screen slides that you may want to pause on to read.