Mother lodes of mercury

Sacramento Bee ^ | October 19, 2003 | Stuart Leavenworth

[farmfriend]

ABBOTT-TURKEY RUN MINE -- The Gold Rush spirit still lingers in the air of this 130-year-old quicksilver mine, where prospectors once extracted mercury and then hauled it to the Sierra for the processing of gold.

But history isn't the only thing that oozes from this abandoned Lake County mine. Every time it rains, toxic mercury gushes from a mountain of spent ore and dumps into nearby Cache Creek. From there it flows to the Sacramento River, adding to the contamination that taints fish from the Sierra to the San Francisco Bay.

[farmfriend]

Arnold is their environmental friend, they will demand that he do something. The scary part is that since his environmental policy comes right from the Sierra Club play book, he is likely to do something. Heaven help us all.

[truthandjustice1]

"She must have had an allergic reaction to it i guess cause i played with it for years "

I don't believe it was the same type of mercury that killed her and left you ok.

[DefCon]

It wasn't elemental mercury that killed her,
(as the author would have us believe from the beginning of the article)
it was actually dimethylmercury.
This fact is buried in the following paragraph in the rather poorly written article:

"...How could they have known? Back in January, virtually nothing was known about the extraordinary dangers of dimethylmercury, the rare man-made compound Karen had spilled. Scientists didn't know it could seep through a latex glove like a drop of water through a Kleenex. Doctors didn't know it could break down the body over the course of a few months, slowly, insidiously, irreversibly..." (emphasis added)

[Publius6961]

We seem to have a rash of envirowhacko the-sky-is-falling articles lately.
I wish Bruce Ames from UC would reprint his seminal book about the presence of natural toxins in our environment.

Sure, mercury is scary, and I wouldn't want to eat the stuff on a regular basis, but this article is a hit piece at worse or an ignorant rant at best.
The problem is that it's easy to blame mining for the present level of mercury in the water, but since there is no benchmark level established prior to mining, the best we can say is that that it is not a good thing.

Knowledge of the hydrologic cycle confirms that percolation has always been with us and all that water eventually is subject to human use. It is silly to assert that the tailing of mercury ore is more polluting than mercury ore in its natural site.
Just like the asbestos panic ignores the profusion of serpentine exposed at the surface all over San Francisco.

The fact that measurement instruments have become sensitive to the point of absurdity does not validate the notion that the danger to humans has increased proportionally.

[farmfriend]

Have you read Carry_Okie's book? It is worth the read.

[Publius6961]

Holy cow!
I've been dead for decades.
Something certainly killed Karen, but certainly not "playing" with a drop of metallic mercury.

This sounds much like the imaginary story, cleverly weaved by nuts, and circulated within the internet to have a desired effect among the ignorant, and to elicit the "right" response.
My friends and I played with metallic mercury for years, sans gloves and a listing of their current professions would elicit laughter from most readers here.

Judgeships, engineers, biologists, physicists, doctors of all flavors, etc.

I wonder what really killed Karen.

[ATOMIC_PUNK]

It wasn't regular mercury, it was dimethyl mercury.

I don't know how i missed that hmmm thanx

[redhead]

"Just a tiny drop of liquid. Sweet-smelling. Dense. Deadly."

I have a rare form of mercury poisoning. I am extremely allergic to it on my skin and in the air, and break out even if I do no more than be in the presence of the vapors. It manifests itself as a red, agonizingly itchy eczema that spreads like poison ivy. It takes about three weeks for the symptoms to subside.

In the hospital in the 60's, of all the patients in there, guess where they broke the thermometer? The nurse hurriedly wiped down the entire area, and I rushed to the shower and completely changed my gown and underwear while she changed my bed and cleaned up as much of the mercury as she could find. Sure enough, by that night, my entire trunk looked like measles and chickenpox together. The doctors had never seen anything like it, so they all had to come and take a look.

[Publius6961]

No, but thanks for the reminder. I will order it today.
I should add that when I was in High school, I was compelled to take all of the hard sciences, including mathematics, and in addition was an active member of the Jr section of the Academy of Sciences in Golden Gate Park.

We studied natural processes in all disciplines, calmly, deliberately and objectively, a few years before the "environmental" full scale panic took root in an increasingly ignorant populace. At that time "environmental" was simply an innocuous adjective. It has become a lethal weapon, now, in the hands of ignorant apes.

[Publius6961]

This fact is buried in the following paragraph in the rather poorly written article:

Are we the only two who are certain that the camouflaging of this crucial fact is not accidental?

[Publius6961]

It wasn't regular mercury, it was dimethyl mercury.
...
It was just a drop of liquid, just a tiny glistening drop. It glided over her glove like a jewel.

This hit piece article was crafted deliberately to promote the impression that it was metallic mercury that she was playing with.

The alternative, that the author was clueless about her subject, would be a remarkable alternative.

[yhwhsman]

This hit piece article was crafted deliberately to promote the impression that it was metallic mercury that she was playing with.

Exactly. Which is why they started out discussing the runoff from the mines.

What I don't understand is why we couldn't go in and extract the mercury from the slag heaps. Our extractin technology has to be much more advanced than in 1840. If it's 'gushing' out during every rainstorm, you would think a mining company would jump at the chance to recover what's remaining; they don't have to dig for it.

[Cultural Jihad]

State geologist Ron Churchill walks past the furnace, left, where miners used to roast mercury ore at the Abbott-Turkey Run mine near Clear Lake.

It would cost millions to stop the toxic runoff from the mercury tailings left behind, says Churchill, leaving the abandoned mine.

Bob Lau, a recent immigrant, fishes for bass on Brannan Island. Lau, who fishes for his family, hadn't heard about poll- ution alerts. "Mercury?" he said. "I don't know what that is."

What you need to know about mercury

What is methylmercury?

Methylmercury is an organic form of mercury easily taken up by microorganisms and passed up the food chain from fish to people. Natural processes in lakes and rivers convert mercury into methylmercury.

How does mercury get into the environment?

Some mercury is natural, coming from volcanoes and geothermal vents. In the United States, coal-fired power plants are the largest human source. Mercury falls into waterways and is converted into methylmercury. In California, the largest source is leftover mercury from the Gold Rush.

What is the threat?

Methylmercury attacks the central nervous system. At high enough levels, it can result in loss of coordination, blurred vision, blindness and hearing and speech impairment. It is especially dangerous for children and developing fetuses.

How can I be exposed to methylmercury?

The main exposure is from eating fish that have built up the toxin. Fish high on the food chain, such as swordfish, sharks and bass, tend to have the highest levels. The Food and Drug Administration advises pregnant women and women of childbearing age not to eat more than 12 ounces of store-bought fish weekly and to avoid eating fish they catch themselves.

Is drinking water a threat?

No. Methylmercury levels in drinking water are extremely low.

Has anyone been poisoned by mercury-laden fish in California?

Authorities have found no cases of poisoning yet, but they haven't launched a full investigation.

Where can I get more information?

The state Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment posts advisories on mercury. The Web site is www.oehha.ca.gov/fish/hg/.

Sources: U.S. Environmental Protection Agency; California Office of Environmental Health Hazard Assessment

Graphic: Quicksilver quagmire [510k GIF]

[boris]

"She must have had an allergic reaction to it i guess cause i played with it for years ."

You and I both played with elemental mercury, which--as I said, is pretty harmless. She got a dose of dimethylmercury, which is quite a different thing.

--Boris

[The Red Zone]

The world has already learned so much. It learned that the gloves that were supposed to protect her actually acted as a conductor to the poison. It learned that dimethlymercury, so easy to order in research catalogs, is more deadly than anyone had imagined.

This stuff has been around for decades and yet she was the first well known poisoning case?

[Looking for Diogenes]

"But you can't just fix a site and walk away from it," said Churchill. "Who is going to do the maintenance? And who will pay for it over the long haul?"

What happened to the mine owners? The simple rule in life is whoever makes a mess should clean it up.

[r9etb]

What happened to the mine owners? The simple rule in life is whoever makes a mess should clean it up.

Most of the folks who created and abandoned those mines have been dead for 100 years or more.

[Looking for Diogenes]

Most of the folks who created and abandoned those mines have been dead for 100 years or more.

Most, but not all. The most recent owners worked the mine as recently as 23 years ago.

"One of these is the Abbott-Turkey Run mine near Clear Lake, which was mined for a century, then abandoned in 1970."

[farmfriend]

Flagging you to last two articles I posted just incase you missed them.