“...imagine people sticking mercury in their mouth.”
No one was drinking mercury or ‘sticking mercury in their mouths’ - I put GLASS thermometers in my mouth.
Do you remember mercurichrome? It was used as a antiseptic. Until about 1978. What 70s kid didn’t have mercurochrome put on their cut?
I thought that was kind of a given that the mercury was inside the thermometer that went in the mouth. Under the tongue for 3 minutes. But people today would panic at just that thought. Instead of teaching people the dangers of things like mercury, they just go with the "mercury bad" approach as if people are too stupid to listen to reason.