[Noisebridge-discuss] mercury on the table?

Jeff Younker jeff at drinktomi.com
Wed Jul 1 07:57:17 UTC 2009


On Jun 27, 2009, at 9:52 PM, Noah Balmer wrote:
> I don't come around the space much anymore, so my only interest in  
> this is that I don't want my friends to get sick.  I think the  
> rational thing would be for ye voting members to vote to pay for the  
> necessary professional assessment, of the pros with a vapor detector  
> variety.  Barring agreement on that, I, for one, would chip in  
> toward this. It may not affect me directly, but I care about your  
> brains and don't want them to be damaged

Just so that folks keep things in perspective:

Dental amalgam is 50% mercury.  Mercury has a density of 11g/cm^3.   
Figuring that an average American has two fillings, and that each  
filling is 1/30 of cm^3.  That's 2*1/30cm^3 * 11g/cm^3 * 0.5 = 0.37 g  
of mercury in their mouth.  Therefore a Noisebridge meeting with 40  
people contains about 14.6 g of mercury. And when these people chew  
food, they're spewing out much more vapor when they're talking.

Yes, I personally believe that mercury in dental amalgam is a nasty  
substance.  In fact I believe it strongly enough that I put my money  
where my mouth is, and I had all my amalgam replaced with ceramics.   
However, a 5g spill in a room isn't going to cause nearly the long- 
term damage that most of the population is toting around in their  
mouth 24 hours a day.  Noisebridge is full of nasty toxic things, not  
the least of which are probably the synthetic estrogen polymers in the  
plastic cups.

This perspective has been brought to you by the son of an organic  
chemist.

-jeff




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