mercurochrome

After I wrote my last blog post on mercury, readers wrote to ask about the old-time antiseptic Mercurochrome which - as you might imagine - was named for the poisonous traces of mercury mixed into it. One man wondered about childhood toxic exposure. Another noted that her mother still liked to tell the story of when she was a little girl and dumped Mercurochrome "all over her beautiful white bedspread."  I had to laugh (my mother likes to tell the story of how I colored all over her white bedspread). But if you know Mercurochrome, you know that it would have made an incandescently brilliant…

Elemental mercury is a slippery substance. In the earth's crust, it anchors itself by bonding with other elements, creating materials like the rough coppery rock cinnabar, a crystalline combination of mercury and sulfur. Once cinnabar, or other metallic ores, are mined and crushed, mercury can be easily extracted.  Then the warmer above-ground temperatures, the decrease in pressure, cause pure mercury to become a very odd liquid metal. Unlike a drop of water, a drop of mercury touched by a finger does not wet the skin. Instead, it breaks into smaller drops, tiny glittering balls that…