I discovered it in a first aid kit when I cleaned out my mother's house.

Should I be worried?

Although if Jenny McCarthy heard about it, she'd no doubt tell everybody all about it.

Mercury is persistent in the environment. All that thiomerosol washed away into the waterways, may still be in the fish we eat today!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_(element)#Releases_in_the_environment

mercury mines. Since I was in the business for a while of selling mineral specimens to collectors, I visited some of those mines to collect specimens of cinnabar, a common mineral of mercury. Some of those specimens, including the most valuable of them, had tiny globules of elemental mercury visible on them.

My point is that mercury is a naturally occurring element, and it has been mined for a very long time. It has many uses, from refining gold to being used in countless fever thermometers and barometers before technology developed that allowed its elimination from such use. Dental filling amalgams are still mixed up in dentists offices using mercury.

When I was a kid, we'd find liquid metallic mercury occasionally in the gutters of the streets in our neighborhoods. I'm never sure how it got there, but we patiently collected all of it with glass eyedroppers and kept it in little bottles. We'd coat pennies with it to form a mercury copper amalgam on their surface. It made them look like dimes - well, a little.

Mercury vapor and organic mercury compounds are very poisonous to humans, so we take precautions with mercury that we didn't used to take. A liquid mercury spill brings out the hazmat-suited folks to pick it all up. When I was a kid, not much liquid mercury avoided being spotted and sucked up in eyedroppers by sharp-eyed little boys like me. We survived handling that mercury, even almost 60 years later, in my case.

Mercury isn't a good thing, except when it is. But it's a naturally-occurring element that is distributed widely on the planet. Much of the mercury in the environment is there because of those natural occurrences. There was a small stream near the abandoned mercury mine I used to visit. It led to the ocean, and mercury regularly washed into that stream from the mercury-bearing outcroppings. Not all mercury in nature is there due to human activities. Not by a long shot.

a little bit.

Amount of atmospheric mercury deposited at Wyoming's Upper Fremont Glacier over the last 270 years

Atmospheric mercury deposition corresponds to volcanic and anthropogenic events over the past 270 years. Preindustrial deposition rates can be conservatively extrapolated to present time (4 ng/L; in green) to illustrate the increase during the past 100 years (in red) and significant decreases in the past 15-20 years.

think of an additional graph that shows all that data aggregated so that what we have now is the sum total of all that contamination over decades and centuries!

Robert Louis Stevenson and all that.

all over California. I lived in San Luis Obispo County, which had several.

it's annoying you describe all these non natural sources of mercury pollution then boldly conclude most mercury in the environment is from natural things.

The one I visited to collect specimens is now a superfund site. Not only mercury but thallium are leaching out of the disturbed area and entering the nearby seasonal stream. The pollution is worsened by human exposure of the minerals.

There are also other unexploited cinnabar deposits in the general area, which I've also visited. In those the mercury-bearing minerals are naturally exposed, through natural erosion and also are polluting the environment.

In the long view, most mercury released into the environment comes from natural sources. That has been going on since Earth was formed. Vulcanism is probably the largest source of mercury on this planet. In the chart someone uploaded in this thread, you can see the spike in mercury released into the environment for major volcanic eruptions.

The fact of the matter is that every gram of mercury on this planet comes from some natural source. We can't create mercury. Today, the largest mercury mining operations are in China, where huge deposits are currently being mined. Some pretty spectacular crystallized cinnabar specimens have emerged from those mining operations, too.

Burning coal is a common way mercury is released into the environment. Oddly enough, most of that mercury comes from the plants that have been converted to coal. They included mercury in their tissues, from the natural environment. When the coal is burned that mercury is released into the atmosphere.

Humans release mercury through industrial operations of one sort or another. But mercury is constantly being released into the environment through natural processes as well. It's one of the elements that makes up the crust of this planet, so it's part of the environment naturally. Humans tend to move it around and concentrate it, but it's all of natural origin.

mercury pollution is natural.

your game playing on the whole, "well it's from a natural source" is misleading and you know it, you're just trying to sound intelligent and contrarian --but you're still misleading and wrong.

by your explanation, there is not a single source of contamination or pollution on the earth that doesn't have its origins in natural things in the earth or in the earth's environment.

that's a bullshit thing to say because it's meaningless.

if you mine for gold today or there was a mining 150 years ago and mercury was dispersed and released as a consequence, that isn't a natural occurrence.

you're so bent on making this argument that you don't really care if you end up misleading people to do it.

Thanks for your concern.

congratulations.

you don't take any responsibility to assure that what you're posting is correct and really, that's not one of your concerns.

you've decided in your mind that you're right and no facts will persuade you otherwise.

In fact, the mercury mines I talked about supplied mercury to the gold mining industry, and then to the arms manufacturers, where it was used in primers.

In refining gold, mercury is added to the gold "fines." It forms an amalgam with the gold, but not with other materials that make up the fines. The non-gold materials are washed away, and then the amalgamated gold is put into a retort, where heat is used to vaporize the mercury, leaving only the gold (and any silver) behind, thus purifying the gold.

Gold mining is rarely done in areas where mercury is present. The mercury is mined elsewhere and shipped to the gold fields. I have a couple of ceramic mercury bottles in my collection that were used around the turn of the 19th to 20th centuries. You'll find more information at the link below:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gold_extraction

pedantic enough for you?

usually only by small-scale operations, like one man gold prospecting. At one time, it was a major part of gold mining operations, though. Today, though, other methods are used primarily.

please stop posting unscientific nonsense.

in your own state, much of the mercury contamination of lakes and streams is due to the burning of coal, as mercury is a by product of that.

and in California, where coal burning is not really a factor, mercury is in many places it shouldn't be in larger quantities than it should be from historic mining that has ended, yet the mercury still persists and/or is moving slowly through the environment.

and no, none of what I describe is "natural occurrences".

please.

This is why it's on the front porch.

Especially an infant's brain because it was injected into your poor little body.

Some say there is no link to autism and others say there is a link. What we do know is the medical community decided that mercury should not be injected into infants' bodies; RFK agrees with that community.

And we also know mercury is a toxic metal that is best not applied to skin or injected into a body. That's why they quit using it in skin care.

We now know so much more today than we we did yesterday, and if we keep an open mind, we will know even more come tomorrow!

Nicely done.

Making jokes about a serious medical condition.

Yall being so proud of yourselves makes me sick.

ignorant assholes who perpetuate the myth that I gave my own child autism by getting her vaccinated?

Answer carefully.

I just find the hilarity and the jokes and the name calling surrounding this subject makes me sick. To me it is a serious matter that needs careful deliberation. Just my opinion, others may differ.

back down from this fight.

Particularly with me.

"Robert F. Kennedy Jr. told me that the book he commissioned has a chapter “we were going to leave out, because it’s so controversial, but the evidence is so strong that thimerosal causes autism,” that he’s keeping it in.
Yet in the next breath he said he wasn’t going to publish the book (even though it has a publisher and is going through edits right now) because it is so explosive that he doesn’t want it to prompt a mass panic: “I don’t want parents to stop vaccinating their kids.” (“I’m pro-vaccine,” he insisted several times during the call.)

http://www.cjr.org/the_observatory/robert_kennedy_jr_vaccines_aut.php?page=all

Not that he doesn't re-demonstrate it himself every time he speaks about thimerosal.

Since he's completely incorrect, then at this point he's either deliberately lying or hopelessly uninformed. Either way, he's destroying his credibility in general, which is a shame because he was a powerful advocate against industrial pollution.

It's a shame that he has campaigned so hard to have himself dismissed (revealed) as a crank.

The opinion of the medical community in the US was to eliminate the use of mercury in vaccines.

That's an example of two opinions, theirs' and yours. Ya know whose i respect more?

You blew up into full Chicken Little mode about Fukushima, even though what you posted had little basis in fact, and now you're prattling on about the evils of thimerosal, one of the most thoroughly debunked heaps of anti-science bullshit in the past 50 years.

And when you're called out for it, you double down, mocking everyone who doesn't cuddle up with you under your tinfoil hat.

You repeatedly demonstrate your poor grasp of science and throw a tantrum when people don't find you credible.


If you keep it up, you're not gonna have the whole world on a plate.

Tell us how the Fukushima explosions and release of radiation on a scale never before seen is not going to have an effect on the environment. Do tell.

There is a reason they do not generate electricity using bananas, you know?

You remember my email to you? Read it again.

Of course, you're setting up a straw man. I didn't claim that the "release of radiation on a scale never seen before is not going to have an effect on the environment," so I have no obligation to defend that claim.

However, you have claimed that Fukushima caused Starfish Wasting Syndrome, and you have claimed that thimerosal causes brain defects. You've backed up neither of those claims.


And I don't recall your email.

to start killing starfish before the accident.

The radiation from Fukushima. Before 2011. Oops, he meant Chernobyl, but the problems are older than that. Fat Man, Little Boy???

that can get you kicked out of the E & E group!

Only as it vaporizes. If taken internally, it passes through the digestive system intact quite quickly. It also doesn't react with the skin. Only organic compounds of mercury, plus a few other compounds are actually toxic if ingested.

We do know more than we used to. Some of us know more than others, it seems.

Injected into a poor little innocent body that is growing, growing, growing? With a developing brain which is increasing in size minute by minute by absorbing and gathering together everything it can?

So you are an infant brain expert, too?

If it is found thimerosal is a cause of problems the lawsuits will run into the billions. There is much money on the line. No wonder RFK is being assaulted for following the science.

When you simply say "mercury," you're referring to liquid, metallic, elemental mercury. Nobody ever injected that into anyone. When it comes to technical or scientific language, precision is important. If you want to talk about thiomersal, call it thiomersal or thimerosal, not mercury. It is not mercury, which is a shiny silver metal that is a liquid at room temperature. Thiomersal is a chemical compound containing mercury as one of it's components. It's chemical description is Ethyl(2-mercaptobenzoato-(2-)-O,S) mercurate(1-) sodium

If you fail to be precise, you will often be incorrect. And you are often incorrect when you discuss scientific and medical subjects.

Elemental mercury, as I said, is not toxic if taken internally by mouth. In fact, it used to be used as a laxative for impacted constipation. Now, that was back in the 19th century and earlier, but it worked pretty well.

You just said so. "Thiomerosol is a chemical compound containing mercury as one of it's components." And it is injected, or was.

Precision of language helps you make your point. Imprecision detracts from it. But you do what you find best.

they are actually more misleading in this context than the statement of RobertEarl which you are correcting him about.

unless you want to discuss Free Republic and homophobia.

Post as you choose. I'll do the same. If you want to introduce some irrelevant topic, the floor's yours.

today. Our moms dutifully used whatever tinctures and ointments that were for sale at the time to deal with their kids' injuries. The local dump was generally burned off from time to time to make space for more trash, and who knows what got vaporized when that happened.

I remember a bottle of carbon tetrachloride in the laundry room at my house, where it was used as the default spot remover. It worked great. Of course breathing its fumes is not a good thing at all, but there it was. It smelled funny, too. I remember that smell, because I found it interesting to sniff things.

Somehow, we survived. Amazing, huh?

waiting to be used liberally as needed. It's a word we all learned to pronounce early, early in our lives.

The Merthiolate had the split plastic one. I had forgotten which was which, and we had bottles of both in the medicine cabinet throughout my childhood. Thanks for that photo. It's great.

Into the 70s and early 80s even.

Does your brain still function?

According to some on DU, my brain doesn't function.

That's why when my mother would send me to the derug store to pick up merthiolate, I always came back with mercurochrome

and I remember it stung like crazy. She would put it on, and then blow on the wound until the stinging stopped. (Of course, it may have been merthiolate, and we just called it mercurochrome. That was before I learned to read.)

The horror story from her childhood was castor oil, and she thought she was a great mom because she never gave us that.

Wonder what horror stories my kids will someday tell about I may have done to them. Probably Tylenol, when their livers crap out.

take a look at the people our age dealing with cancers, autoimmune diseases, Parkinson's and dementia. Trying to tease out if a chemical exposure or combination of exposures is at fault is impossible on a practical basis. However, given the body burden we carry (not to mention radiation exposure from testing nuclear bombs) it's a good bet that our exposures play at least a small role in these diseases.

And yet, our average life expectancy is longer than ever. Both of my parents are still alive at age 90. Pretty cool, huh?

Frankly, we don't know what effect those old exposures to things have on us, really.

congrats.

I swam in that stuff. Loved the smell.

I used to stick it in the fridge. Drove my mother crazy.

That's all that got rubbed into my wounds as a disinfectant as a kid.

Alcohol is a bad choice for wounds, though. Hydrogen peroxide is OK, but can also be destructive to healthy tissues. It's great for cleaning out skinned knees, though. My mother used a brush on them with plenty of soap and water. By age 10, I knew better than to tell my mother I had skinned my knee. I took care of that for myself after that. She was brutal with the cleanup. I think it was designed to teach us to be more careful.

"Don't pick at those scabs! It'll get infected!" If my mom said that once, she said it 1000 times.

Used to pour a bead on my palm and roll it around for a while. Also used to melt lead and pour into molds to make toy soldiers. The protective pad under the mold was probably made of asbestos. Those were the good old days.

He also has a jelly jar full of mercury.

shoe salesmen used to x-ray our feet!!! Do you remember that?

It's a wonder any of us survived childhood . . .

I looked at the bones in my feet many times with that fluoroscope. Cool beans. Oddly enough, I still have my feet, too.

There's a great Wikipedia article on them:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shoe-fitting_fluoroscope

being scared and not wanting to put my feet in that mystery box. Then my dad got mad and FORCED me to. Maybe my instincts were correct. My feet never fell off, either, but I did get cancer at age 30.

Those things were removed from all of the stores by the end of the 1950s. A few remain in museums, but have been decommissioned and are inoperable now. They were never a good idea. But then, doctors gave kids penicillin shots for every damned thing back then, too, not knowing that they were breeding penicillin-resistant bacteria. We live and learn, it seems. We always make mistakes, though, so I'm sure we're doing something now that our future generations will think are nuts.

The thing is we do these things, thinking we are doing the best possible things for our children. After all, ill-fitting shoes could lead to life-long problems, right???

I remember how liberally I dosed my kids with Tylenol. After their first shots the nurse told me to just give them Tylenol, if they got a little temp, Tylenol. Chicken pox, Tylenol would help.

Many years after that my dentist told me that the most dangerous thing in American medicine cabinets is Tylenol. It apparently causes liver damage, and the effect is cumulative. He said it is responsible for many, many deaths each year, but we just aren't aware of it.

We have it in the house yet, because my husband can't take other pain relievers, but I won't touch it.

I was dabbed liberally with merthiolate and mercurochrome. My brain is still functioning and I have two degrees to prove it.

It's a miracle any of us survived.

Of course - aside from knowing the facts, I would be suspicious of any article which misspelled the name of the compound it was defending...Official sources, which can be held accountable if they get it wrong, are likely to be more accurate.

It is still in Tripeda (DPaT), most seasonal influenza vaccines, DT and tD vaccines manufactured by Sanofi Pasteur, Inc. & MassBiolog (these are substitutes for the DTP vaccines when the child has a bad reaction to the triple vaccine), and Meningococcal. http://www.fda.gov/BiologicsBloodVaccines/SafetyAvailability/VaccineSafety/UCM096228#t1

It has been removed from routinely recommended long term immunizations, with the exception of some forms of the vaccines for tetanus, diptheria, and pertussis.

As for my misspelling, it's an amalgam of British and American usage. I just didn't bother to go back and normalize the spelling. From the Wikipedia article: "Thiomersal (INN), commonly known in the US as thimerosal, is an organomercury compound." I also used both of those spellings, but created an amalgam of them, as well.

You have a pleasant day.

"When it was included" (which implies it is no longer included)
"but the stuff isn't in the vaccines kids get today in the United States"

Particularly because blanket statements that it is no longer given to children are often coupled with the push for annual influenza vaccines (which - for the most part DO include thimerosal) it is important to be consistently clear so people know to look, ask questions, and make the decision they are comfortable with based on accurate information.

in the OP to the INN variation. I hope that suits you. If not, I can change it to the american usage for you.

keep pushing the "it's no longer in vaccinations given to children" meme, which it is not accurate.

that. The point was that we used that antibacterial compound very freely in the mid-century, and that some of it was obviously absorbed into our bloodstreams through the wounds it was used on. Your nitpicking does not alter that fact.

Whenever I see that generalization made, I correct it because far too many believe it is true - and reciting that "truth"
is fairly commonly used to ridicule people for whom it is an important part of their decision making process.

So if you are addressing the fraction of vaccines which include, your qualification may be technically accurate. On the other hand, if you are addressing frequency and level of exposure, children are receiving annual vaccinations for the flu are receiving exposure which is fairly similar to the exposure they were receiving in the childhood vaccines given to create long term immunity.

That's not really nit-picking - particularly since it is pretty clear that your article was addressed, in large part, to people you perceive as overly concerned about exposure to thimerosal in vaccines.

Today's my day off, and it gets me cranked over to get the day started.

Factoid from the 1950s:

I had a friend who loved chocolate-covered vanilla ice cream bars on a stick sprayed with a covering of Bactine.

I don't remember why, but his Mom would spray on the Bactine when she removed the wrapper and gave it to him, and he liked it.

Which stung like the devil

it had been replaced. There was a bottle of tincture of iodine in the medicine cabinet for years, though, even after it had been replaced in use. For all I know, it's still in there.

Hurt like hell

As my mother would say, "That means it's working."

Here's an old tincture of iodine bottle. Look at the poison warning:

But she never was much of a one for anything new-fangled. Died a few years back and still refused to have an answering machine, computer, or any of that *sniff* new stuff.

When the record player crapped out and one couldn't easily replace it, she switched to the radio. None of those shiny CDs for her.

We lived through the iodine. She lived a happy, Neo-Luddite life.

I like this thread, and all my kids got all their shots. No side-effects.

my mom used that for a bit, but her two favorites were peroxide and dettol.
Even today we use peroxide for every scratch or cut.

...sorta. They left some pretty colors behind though.

If I complained it stung I heard, "That's how you know it's working!"