[ATOMIC_PUNK]

It was 10 months since she had spilled the drop in the lab, four months after she had slipped into a coma

I wonder how ? when i was a kid my grandfather used to save murcury from old radio and tv tubes he kept it in a jar on the workbench i used to play with it all the time making sluthes out of copper foil and copper tubing watching it run all over trying to control it it was great fun and i would get the stuff all over me my clothes hands and eveything still i had no problems with it

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

[F.J. Mitchell]

Other generations of American's must have been immune to the effects of the likes of lead, mercury, etc. My generation played with mercury all the time, doing things like coating old coins in it and making them look mint fresh, among other things, we were just awed that it was a metal and yet liquid at room temperature. Same thing with lead: All our homes, autos and toys were painted with lead based paint. WE even had a little toy set one time, that consisted of molds for toy soldiers, and a small ladle in which to melt the lead and re-mold new soldiers. We loved the taste of lead and often had it in our mouth's.

Some here would probably say that judging from my posts, I am living proof of the harm done by exposure to such metals. I on the other hand will argue just the opposite.

THe greatest fears we had growing up in the thirties and forties, was getting polio, or blood poisoning or tetnus (lockjaw) from stepping on a rusty nail.

Life is full of risks, that is a fact, but most of the risks we are being hounded with are not risks at all, just propaganda from the horse's hindends.

[stands2reason]

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

[null and void]

I wonder how ?

She was making her own dimethyl mercury for a calibration standard on an experiment she was running. It was the dimethyl mercury that soaked through her gloves and poisoned her. At least according to one of my former bosses who was a coleague of hers.

[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)

[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