PADARASAM (MERCURY) Dear Friends,
I had basic details to writeabout the liquid metal Mercury stored in my laptop long back. Due to paucity oftime I could not retrieve and codify them suitably. In this posting I haveavoided the tough technical details and health hazards are just mentioned invery simple manner only sincemany are still under study. I am not forgetting the dishcalled “Rasam” and planet called Mercury (Budha). I will also include a feeling called “Rasam”sometimes while scratching the legs, back of the body etc. when irritationappear there in. Sincerely, Gopala krishnan 4-1-2011. Reposted after editing and updating the information on 1-1-2021. Wish you all a happy new year. R.Gopala krishnan 1. The liquid metal mercury. Though I had studied about theliquid metal mercury, actually I saw the metal in my physics lab for the firsttime. When accidentally mercury fallen from hands, I never knew it cannot be taken up and it is afairly costly metal. When supplied to us for experiments in glasscontainers it had formed with in itself tiny balls and it had silver colour. 2. Use of mercury When we talk of mercuryimmediately what come to our memory is the thermometer, which the doctor use tomeasure temperature. The principal of expansion of mercury on temperatures isemployed in them. The barometer, which is used totell the maximum and minimum temperature, also employs mercury. Another familiar application ofmercury is in the mirrors. The mirrors we use for seeing ourselves have coatingof mercury in the back of the glass to create the image. Update- I have read present day mirrors do not use mercury. In industrial electricalapplication, we would have heard of mercury lights and mercury contacts. Mercury has widened use in filtering gold and silver fromother impurities and getting out in earlier times. Mercury is used primarily for themanufacture of industrial chemicals or for electrical and electronicapplications. Liquid mercury was sometimes usedas a coolant for nuclearreactors. Mercury is also used in many more manufacturing applications. 3. Weight of mercury Mercury weighs roughly 13 timesthat of water. In technical terms we call it as density. In short one glass full ofmercury will weigh equivalent to 13 glasses of water when hold on hand!! Or insimple terms while one litre of water weigh one kg, one litreof mercury weigh 13 Kgs!!! We cannot lift by hand. 4. Simple chemistry of mercury Mercury is written as Hg, itsdensity is 13.55 kgs/litre and melting point is –38.4 degree centigrade. Atomicnumber is 80. This means in a molecule of mercury there will be 80 mercuryatoms. Boiling point of mercury is356.73 degree centigrade. Water kept in our vessels in the gasstove for boils at 100 degree centigrade. 3.5 times the temperature has to ricefor boiling of mercury- viz. just like water become steam, mercury vapour willarise. 5. Distillation of mercury Mercury is avolatile metal, which is easily produced by heating cinnabar followed by downwarddistillation of the mercury vapour. (New information to me)Some of theearliest literary references to the use of mercury distillation come fromIndian treatises such as the Arthashastra of Kautilya dating from the late firstmillennium BC onwards. Some evidence for mercury distillation is reported fromthe ancient Roman world also. In India,vermilion or cinnabar i.e. mercuric sulphide has had great ritual significance,typically having been used to make the red bindi or dot on the forehead usually associated withHinduism. 6. Quick silver Mercury isalso called quicksilver. I am not able to get the reason for the same. Mercurywas named after the Roman god Mercury, known for speed and mobility (Of coursenew information to me. I was thinking what the relation between the two was). 7. Cost of mercury The currentcost of mercury is about $550 per flask. A flask is an archaic unit ofmeasuring mercury that weighs 76 pounds. This works out to about $7.24 perpound of mercury. 8. Availability of mercury The averageabundance of mercury in the Earth's crust is approximately 0.08 parts permillion, which is very small. To put this in perspective, silver also comprisesabout 0.08ppm of the Earth's crust. But silver costs about $260 per pound. 9. So why is mercury comparatively cheap thansilver? There aretwo reasons. Firstly, mercury isn't chemically compatible with the commonrock-forming minerals, so it tends to segregate out from other minerals whenmagma hardens or a rock is hydrothermally altered. The result is a highlyconcentrated deposit of mercury. Because mercury occurs in such concentrateddeposits, it is cheap to extract whencompared to something more spread out like gold or silver. So in summary,mercury is a rare metal, but easily exploited deposits and weak demand keep theprice down relative to other rare metals. 9a. Mercury is a toxic metal Secondly,mercury is highly toxic. Many of the old uses for mercury, suchas gold extraction, thermometers, and barometers, are being phased out due tohealth and environmental concerns. THE MAIN MODERN USE OF MERCURY IS INFLUORESCENT LIGHTS. 10. Mercury – no biological function Mercury is aunique element that, unlike many metals, has no essential biological function.(This means Mercury is not required for the body) It is liquid at room temperature and is 13.6times heavier than water. Its unique physical properties have been exploitedfor a variety of uses such as in mercury switches, thermostats, thermometers,and other instruments as already told. Its abilityto amalgamate with gold and silver were earlier used in mining these preciousmetals and as a dental restorative. Its toxicproperties have been exploited for medications, preservatives, antiseptics, andpesticides. For thesereasons there have been many industrial uses of mercury, and occupationalexposures of workers and industrial emissions and effluents contaminating air,water, soil, and ultimately food chains have long been a matter of great publichealth concern. Mercury hasbeen used since prehistoric times and has been known to be anoccupation-related hazard at least since the middle ages. As the use of mercury has changed, so havethe populations at risk also has changed considerably. 11. Mercurialisam At first,mercurialism was mainly a disease of mercury miners. In the 16th and 17thcenturies, mercury poisoning was an occupational disease among gilders, ofgold, silver, or copper, who used mercury in the process of preparing a surfaceto be decorated. In the lasttwo decades it has become clear that mercury released into the environment maybe bio concentrated and enter our food chain. The threemodern "faces" of mercury are the risk from the exposure of people tomethyl mercury in fish, mercury vapor from amalgam tooth fillings,and ethyl mercury in the form of thimerosal added as an antiseptic to widelyused vaccines. There are a lot of fish eaters and presence of methyl mercury isa concern. 12. Organic and in organic mercury Mercury hasbasically two forms: Organic and inorganic, and both are toxins. Inorganic mercury is found in or near:thermometers, barometers, dental fillings, batteries, electric wiring andswitches, fluorescent lights, pesticides, fungicides, vaccines, paint,skin-tightening creams, spills, antiseptic creams, pharmaceutical drugs andointments. Organicmercury becomes methyl mercury when combined with carbon by water or soilorganisms. It can bio accumulate and pass up the food chain. This occurs in marine life and can be found in farm animals and produce. Humans canconvert inorganic to organic forms. The concentrations in thebody are highest in the brain and kidneys when entered in to the body.It has also been reported in the red cells, liver, muscle tissues, and gall bladder. Whileinorganic mercury is not efficiently absorbed in the gastrointestinal tract,organic mercurial compounds are readily absorbed because of their lipidsolubility. At one timemercuric chloride was widely used as an antiseptic, and acute mercuric chloridenegative effects was much more common. 12.1 Ethyl mercury Ethylmercury in the form of a preservative, thimerosal, added to certain vaccines,is the most recent form of mercury that has become a public healthconcern. Thiomersal,also called thimerosal, is an ethyl mercury derivative used as a preservativeto prevent bacterial contamination of multidose vaccine vials after they havebeen opened. There have been multitudes of study about it. Consideringall aspects on the use of vaccines the World Health Organization still recommends the use ofthiomersal-containing vaccines as part of the expanded programme ofimmunization as I read pages and pages about it. Toxic metalsexist in our environment as pollutants in our air, soil, water and consequentlyour food supply. We face the added challenge of the toxic metals in ourfillings (silver/mercury amalgams) and the thimerosol mercury compound that hasbeen used as preservative for over half a century in our vaccinations. Thesemetals can build in our tissues and can cause our systems to malfunction onmany different levels 13. Rasam Let usdivert to our dish rasam. It is a dish in liquid form prepared and served afterpayasam and before curd or buttermilk in Kerala. Rasam with pepper added is good for digestion. Themain ingredients of rasam are tamarind, salt, extract of dhal in smallquantity. Jeera or pepper is added and fried with curry leaves. Normallywhen there is doubt of indigestion, or for simple meals, or when suspicion offever is there, rasam with rice is consumed by many. A pappadam or appalam willadd to the taste. Normallyin feasts appalam is served a 2nd time along with rasam. Thefirst time appalam being with sambar. 14. Rasam in scratching with nail or on wall whileitching occurs. The basicreason of occurrence of sudden itching is not known. While wounds are gettingcured itching happen on the nearby skin and it is advised not to scratch it tothe maximum possible. But suddenitching in feet, hands and back is not known. One way to effectively deal is todivert attention. Other is to scratch the itching area on rough surface, mosteffective being fingernails. Backsideitch can be reduced by scratching the back at a rough wall. Recently Ifound an equipment just like thava in a shop for backside itching, which can beself-used. Diabetic patients may sometimesgot wake up from even sleep with itching. Actually theenjoyment feeling (rasam) of scratching on the itch cannot be told. It is anatural tendency to scratch the itching area and feel the rasam. The itching iscommon with animals too. We can see cows scratching against any hard walls;dogs roll on ground for itching. We can see monkeys always scratching the bodywith nails. When a person scratch sometimes he is asked- why you are scratching likemonkey? -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Thatha_Patty" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/thatha_patty/127658340.4929709.1609484071432%40mail.yahoo.com.
