How to neutralize mercury?

Mercury, despite its rarity in everyday life, can bring considerable problems to the house. Unfortunately, not everyone knows how to neutralize mercury in unforeseen situations. Our article is devoted to this problem.

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Mercury Use Areas

Mercury( Hg) is a fairly well-known element from Mendeleev's periodic system. It has been used since ancient times for a variety of purposes:

1. Alchemists of the Middle Ages tried to extract gold from it;
2. Doctors - cure many diseases. To this end, they designated mercury as a laxative, diuretic and antiseptic.
3. She was present in ancient cosmetics and paints.
4. Mercury is also used in some industries, but there are few chances for ordinary citizens.
5. Mercury thermometer is widely used in almost all hospitals, clinics, health centers in schools and kindergartens. They are also in our home medicine kits, although children are given only electronic children.
   

From medicine, mercury has gone only after the 70s of the twentieth century. Now every child knows that it is dangerous. But nevertheless, we all can face a broken mercury thermometer or fluorescent lamp. And what to neutralize mercury is known only to individuals whose professional activities are associated with chemical reagents. Why, then, have these dangerous mercury thermometers not come out of use yet? The main reason is their accuracy and inexpensive cost.

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What is dangerous for mercury?

This is a transition metal, which at room temperature is a heavy silvery-white liquid. Thermometers usually contain no more than 2 grams of mercury. But its small content does not mean that the danger from it is just as small. Knowledge of how to neutralize mercury is needed for the following reasons for its hazardous effects on the human body:

• Harm does not affect the metal itself, but its vapors that are odorless and we can not sense their presence in the air.
• This first class toxin is a cumulative poison, which means it has the property of accumulating in the body.
• Evaporation, mercury enters the lungs and then spreads blood flow to all organs, first of all, destroying the nervous system.
• It is especially dangerous to breathe fumes of mercury in pregnant women, as these pairs block the nerve cells of the child's brain.
• Mercury quickly penetrates the body, but very long it is removed from it.

Important! Two grams of a broken thermometer is enough to poison an adult healthy man. The concentration of vapors in a room exceeds the permissible norm by 20-30 times.

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Than neutralize mercury?- Rules for demercurization

If you accidentally broke a thermometer, then you need to know what to neutralize mercury at home. First of all, you should not panic and do rash things. Your actions should be calm and clear.

Follow this algorithm:

1. Bring everyone out of this room and close doors and windows. This is to ensure that mercury balls do not spread by shoes or drafts throughout the apartment, and toxic fumes do not penetrate into other rooms.

Important! First of all, the premise should be left by elderly people, children and pregnant women.

1. You should prepare a jar of water, rubber gloves, gauze bandage on your face, paper sheets, tape or tape.
2. It is necessary to turn off the air conditioner, heater( if any), close the batteries( if the heating season) and remove other heat sources. The higher the temperature in the room, the more intense the mercury will evaporate.
3. Wear a damp gauze bandage on your face and protective gloves on your hands.
   
4. Take a pair of sheets of paper and gently sweep mercury balls onto one of them with a second sheet or a hair brush. Do this smoothly, slowly, as they tend to crumble into small particles, which will later be problematic to assemble. Then send mercury to a jar of water and close it tightly with a lid. Water does not allow couples to rise.
5. Collect small particles of mercury with tape or tape. Tear off pieces of 5-10 cm, gently apply and smoothly lift. Fold in half and send to a jar of water.

Important! If there is no adhesive tape, it is possible to use water-soaked and wrung out newspaper or filter paper. Just apply to the balls of mercury and throw in a jar of water.

1. Flashlight under the skirting. If there is a remnant of mercury - you have to remove the plinth and collect the balls in the above ways.
2. Inspect the flashlight with all kinds of cracks close to the scene. Of these, you can try to get mercury with a medical syringe or a needle from a syringe, with a wet cotton wool wrapped around the tip.
3. After you have collected all the mercury, open the windows and ventilate the room for several hours, so that toxic fumes will fade.

Important! In the next two weeks, try to carry out daily ventilation and wet cleaning in the room.

1. Treat surfaces that are in contact with the substance, with a special solution, to neutralize the mercury:
2. Add 1 gram of water to 40 grams of grinded laundry soap and 50 grams of soda ash.

Important! Slots, where the mercury balls could roll, you can pour this solution.

1. You can also use a strong iodine solution to neutralize mercury.
2. Mix 100 g of vinegar with an aqueous solution of potassium permanganate( the color should be dark brown).

Important! Choose one of the solution options to neutralize mercury. Do not use them together, or other toxic chemical compounds may result.

1. Be prepared for the fact that the treated surfaces can remain indelible stains after demercurization.

Important! The ancient alchemists considered mercury a symbol of the planet Mercury, hence the term "demercurization".

1. If mercury has got on the carpet, then either cut out the contaminated area of ​​the carpet, or gently fold it and dispose of it entirely( wrap it in film and take it to the dump).

Important! The carpet should be turned off from the edges to the place where mercury was poured.

1. It is necessary to wash the floor and other surfaces with a soap solution and then with clean water.

Important! If the thermometer is broken on a ceramic tile, then it can be washed with chlorine to neutralize mercury.

1. Fold up your shoes, clothes, gloves, gauze bandages, in which you cleaned the cellophane bag and tighten it tightly. All things that, in one way or another, are in contact with mercury, can not be washed. They should be discarded without regret in a dense package.
2. Call the Ministry of Emergency Situations or Sanitary and Epidemiological Supervision. They will tell you what to do with the mercury that you have collected. Usually they have a point of disposal of such substances.
3. As a last resort, take out the container with mercury far away, outside the settlement and bury it in the ground. Over time, it is all neutralized and evaporated.
4. If it is suspected that you have not removed all of the mercury, contact the above services to measure the concentration of mercury vapor in the room and help with demercurization.

Important! Usually about 80% of mercury is collected mechanically.

1. Professionally demercurization is carried out with special compounds that oxidize mercury and make it nonvolatile: 20% solution of ferric chloride, 5% aqueous solution of dichloramine, solution of potassium permanganate with hydrochloric acid and others. Even there are special kits for demercurization.
2. The person who was engaged in cleaning the premises of mercury, should consume a lot of liquid and drink a course of vitamins.

Important! If you suspect that somehow mercury has spread, but you do not know exactly how much it was and where the balls of metal could have rolled, do not show any initiative and do not try to clean the place of mercury on your own. Do not risk your health - call the Ministry of Emergency Situations, Sanitary and Epidemiological Supervision, the Civil Defense Headquarters or even the police. They know better than you and me how to neutralize mercury.

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What is strictly forbidden when neutralizing mercury at home?

• In no case can you collect mercury vacuum cleaner, no matter what modern model it might be. Mercury will be atomized inside the vacuum cleaner into tiny particles, and a running hot engine will intensify evaporation many times.

Important! After such treatment the vacuum cleaner should be thrown out.

• Do not use a broom too. It will not help to collect the balls, but will only crush them and scatter them around the room.
• Do not allow collected mercury to drain into drains. It will settle in the pipes and will poison the air in your house for a long time.
• Do not dispose of collected mercury in the refuse chute. The bank can break up, and mercury will evaporate not at the landfill, as you expected, but at your entrance.
• You can not open windows before all the mercury is collected. Wind blows or drafts will spread small balls of mercury all over the room, which will poison your life for a long time and spoil your health.
• It is not recommended to switch on the air conditioner. In this case, the mercury will settle on the filters.

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Symptoms of mercury poisoning

Acute poisoning can manifest itself after a couple of hours, because mercury quickly penetrates into the body. The characteristic signs of acute poisoning and the fact that you have to neutralize mercury already in your body are:

• general weakness;
• metallic taste in the mouth;
• nausea;
• vomiting;
• diarrhea;
• abundant drooling;
• gum bleeding.
  

In severe cases, there may appear:

• cough;
• shortness of breath;
• increased body temperature;
• worsening of cardiac activity.

With a slight poisoning by mercury vapor a person can feel:

• severe headache;
• overall fatigue.

In case of chronic poisoning with mercury vapor( if mercury is inadvertently collected or the person is constantly in contact with mercury, for example in production), the state of health gradually worsens:

• there is a frequent headache;
• apathy;
• irritability;
• insomnia;
• decreases the sensitivity of the skin, taste buds and smell;
• over time, this set adds jittery eyelids, lips, hands and other signs of damage to the nervous system.

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Help with mercury poisoning

1. For acute poisoning, the stomach should be washed with 20-30 g of activated carbon.

Important! You can replace the coal with water, whipped with chicken fresh protein.

1. After this procedure, after 20 minutes, give the affected person milk that neutralizes mercury and other toxins well.

Important! You can give boiled rice or oatmeal. They will also bind everything bad in the stomach.

1. Then you need to take a laxative to completely remove from the body the remains of toxic substances and give the victim complete rest.

Important! If the condition of a person who has been poisoned with mercury vapor, you are in doubt - better hospitalize it. Doctors perfectly know how to cope with this problem. If poisoning is a mild form - it's enough to be observed for a while in the clinic.

That's all the recommendations for such frequent and quite dangerous cases of meeting a person with mercury. And in order to avoid such a danger altogether, get rid of mercury thermometers, especially if there are children in the house, because they most often cause the broken thermometers. Give them, for example, to the nearest hospital. Replace such devices with electronic ones, and you will sleep peacefully, without fear that your child accidentally smashed this measuring device and swept the evidence under the cabinet, for fear of punishment.

And if you do not agree to part with such an accurate mercury thermometer, then store it in an unbreakable container, in a place where children and pets can not reach.