Panic! Broken thermometer!

by Walter Olson on January 12, 2007

Nowadays the response can stop just short of a SWAT team and helicopter rescue, as seems to have happened in this tale from a private home in Carmel, Putnam County, New York (”Broken Thermometer Causes 100 to Respond to Mercury Spill”, AP/WSYR, Jan. 2; Q and O, Jan. 3)(via Coyote).

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{ 4 comments }

1 TC 01.12.07 at 1:47 am

WE used to play with it in our bare hands!

Do you have any idea how bright a nickel gets when rubbed with the stuff?

Hmmmm thinking such is what may have caused ALL my challenges in life.

Is this a good place to seek out a lawyer for grievance?

2 John 01.12.07 at 9:11 am

I used to rub it on nickels too! And roll little balls of it back and forth in the pencil tray of my grade school desk.

I think it has caused all of my life’s problems too!

Class action suit time?

3 C- 01.12.07 at 10:49 am

This is soon-to-be a classic from the world of “hazardous chemical responses.” The irony is that Material Data Safety Sheets (”MSDS”’s) are usually written with liability in mind. As a former chemist, I used to laugh at the fact that sucrose (table-sugar) is an “inhalation hazard” requiring a respirator. I was also dumbfounded by the number a chemicals that were “known carcinogens in the State of California.” Luckily, I was working in another state, so the chemicals were safe.

So the family and the state over-reacted. And to be fair, mercury is a true hazardous material. But what’s next? A DEP visit when you pour sugar into the sugar bowl?

4 Michael V. Minutillo 01.13.07 at 6:15 am

Water and oxygen are dangerous if used inappropriately, too! Aren’t we just a little bit overreactive here??

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