Wonder what the decontamination procedure performed on the teacher and students was - firehose?
No kidding. Just get a couple pennies and pick up the mercury. Sheesh!
why isn’t everyone over 40 dead yet?
Absolutely! I remember Mr. Kimball showing us how cool it was to roll it across the table. He didn't let us touch it bare handed or anything, but there certainly was no hysteria surrounding it.
There is more mercury in a can of tuna than in a thermometer.
Do they close the restrooms because someone forgot to flush?
Does anyone remember when we used to play with mercury in high school? You’d get some mercury, spill in on a table, push the little balls of mercury around with your finger, dip your dimes into the mercury to get them all shiny, and NONE OF US GOT SICK OR HAD TO HAVE HAS/MAT COME IN WITH SPACE SUITS TO SWEEP IT UP. What, are we nuts?
I’m normal as they come. I may do funny things to small animals with dinner forks, but I’m quite normal.
Oh for Pete’s sake.
That stuff is FUN to play with!!!!
This is ridiculous. Elemental mercury poses no risk to health.
***Then vs. now story. When I was in HS we’d play with mercury on the lab tables.***
We used to make real silver coins (remember them?) shine with Mercury. Had lots of fun with it. Some kids even touched their tongue to it to see if it had flavor. And of course some of it was spilled on the floor. Each family had a Mercury thermometer to check for fevers. some were broken at home and we played with the mercury there also.
Quite a lot of Mercury was used and spilled in the Glycol reboilers (dryers) in the Natural gas fields also.
A thermometer was broken
What a bunch of morons.
This almost happened in one of my college chemistry classes, however I put a towel over the drain and used a pipette to suck up the spilled mercury.
The grad assistant acted like I should have been arrested!
They’ll declare Martial Law if someone microwaves a bag of popcorn.
Lockdown and decon for a broken thermometer, and a felony rap for a Swiss Army knife...gee, I’m glad I went to school when I did.
Unfortunately, I wouldn’t be surprised if were an anal thermometer which was broken during an alternative lifestyle class, causing the uproar.
So that is where the rectal thermometer went.
We played with it, as well. My dad used to get some on the job once in awhile and bring it home for us to play with. He used to tell us not to handle it "too much" because you could get poisoned through the skin, but we rolled it around in the palms of our hands, and we're all still here. Mercury's loads of fun to horse around with. Fascinating stuff; my dad would tell us that it was both a liquid and a solid.
We broke thermometers to play with the really neat silver stuff. Then it was used to fill our teeth.
This should employ at least a dozen useless, idiot bureaucrats and justify their $75,000 annual salary. If somehow the moron writer could have documented some endangered species getting the sniffles, he would be in line for a Pulitzer prize.
We broke thermometers to play with the really neat silver stuff. Then it was used to fill our teeth.
The American educational system is run by hysterical knee jerk fools.