currawong
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Mercury accident and disposal
I purchased an old sphygmanometer online to get a small amount of mercury, but during postage most of the mercury spilled from it into the packaging.
I cleaned up as much as possible with a syringe and stored it under water in a hdpe reagent bottle then in a plastic outer container with sulphur
powder in it, however there are still a substantial amount of tiny beads in the bubble wrap and cardboard that I can't get with the syringe and won't
coalesce into a larger bead due to the surface they are on. I have put the cardboard and bubble wrap into a plastic garbage bag and double bagged it,
but now I don't really know what to do with it. I rang up the council (I am in Australia) and asked if the community recycling centre (accepts most
household hazardous waste) takes mercury waste but they said no and had no idea where I should take it. Since it is metallic mercury which is
relatively inert, not soluble compounds or organomercury compounds would it be okay to dispose of it with regular household waste?
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j_sum1
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Really easy to get this sort of thing completely out of proportion. And regulations and bureaucratic systems will do that.
We are talking less than a gram here by the sounds of it. It you did find someone to take it, they would not isolate it. Just keep it secure.
I would add a liberal amount of sulfur to the bag and seal it. Then send to landfill. Realistically, it will be less harmful than a lot of stuff that
gets sent there. Not ideal, but not disastrous. Remember that modern landfills are designed to contain all manner of leachable and unidentified stuff.
Remember also that mercury sulfide is a naturally occurring mineral, and in some places it literally weeps with liquid mercury. Remember also that
people used Hg thermometers for years with breakages common. People lived.
Kudos for wanting to do the right thing. But at some point you need to be practical.
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currawong
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Thanks, that sounds like a good idea. I don't have a lot of experience handling mercury and I wanted to make sure I wasn't going to do something dumb.
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Keras
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The best way I know to store unwanted mercury is to react it with sulphur to get mercury sulphide, a.k.a. cinnabar. AFAIK, it is insoluble so not very
toxic (your body won’t absorb it) and, contrarily to mercury metal, it is non volatile, so it doesn’t have the vapour issue.
It is reported as toxic, but it is unclear whether the substance is toxic in itself (which I doubt – don’t eat it, of course, but its own toxicity
should be low) or because of the processing it underwent to liberate elemental mercury from it.
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Fery
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mercury content in earth crust 0.1 ppm = 1 g of mercury in 10 tons of soil
your amount is really tiny
and as guys already wrote, HgS is practically insoluble in water 2 * 10^-27 mol/l
if you do not have S at hand, also Zn dust is good scavanger of Hg (creates an amalgam which is faster than the reaction between Hg and S)
you can sleep without worries
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metalresearcher
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Why not dump the plastic with the Hg in it, in HNO3 ? That dissolves the Hg, oxidizes (?) the plastic and you can collect the solution of Hg(NO3)2.
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Fulmen
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True, but one should also comply with all local regulations. Or at least know that you are violating them.
We're not banging rocks together here. We know how to put a man back together.
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davidfetter
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If you have or plan to have metallic mercury around, it's a good idea to have sulfur around just in case of spills, but apart from that, it's not a
giant concern. Water-soluble mercury salts (i.e. not the cinnabar that sulfur will form when sprinkled on it) are a whole different situation, and
need to be treated with great care and respect.
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Radiums Lab
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Yea soluble Hg is a problem but most of the institutions and schools here in India dump lead salts (specifically PbNO3) and Mercury salts down the
drain.
Last week we did an experiment to detect NO3^-1(given salt was lead nitrate) ion and the used up lead salts were instructed to be washed down the
drain, I had no other choice but to do it.
We used Nessler's reagent (K2[HgI4]) to detect ammonium ion and the contents of the test tube were dumped down the drain too, again I couldn't help
but just watch it.
I am not taking about me just pouring it down the drain but it's 60 other students in my class and there are around 20 similar classes. Imagine how
much Lead and Mercury is dumped every year and it keeps on repeating year after year.
Feel free to correct my spellings or grammar.
[Edited on 11-8-2025 by Radiums Lab]
Water is dangerous if you don't know how to handle it, elemental fluorine (F₂) on the other hand is pretty tame if you know what you are doing.
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davidfetter
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Given the quantities, it's probably not the worst thing going into the drainage system, and by the time it gets to somewhere where it could be turned
into potable water, it's probably dilute enough not to be a real problem. Still and all, it's a bad idea to handle lab wastes that way, not least
because it teaches people a casualness about byproducts and their care that it should not be teaching.
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BromicAcid
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Just FYI, when we spill mercury at work we use a round bottomed flask with a vacuum side arm and a length of tubing fitted into it and then we pull
vacuum on the side arm, we use that to suck up the tiny drops of mercury.
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Sulaiman
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opinions
I like the idea of a vacuum flask
I hate the idea of dumping mercury or its compounds into waterways
.............
every year humans mine thousands of tons of mercury
(about 1g/human)
- where does it all go to ?
humans also release thousands of tons of mercury into the atmosphere every year by burning fossil fuels
(about 0.5g/human)
BUT an entire hazmat team may be needed for the safe disposal of your 1g of mercury 
........................
AFAIK the vapour pressure of mercury in a sealed container is the same with or without a layer of water,
so unless you are using the water to slowly leech more reactive metals that may be dissolved in the mercury
all that is achieved is the production of mercury polluted water.
Just use the smallest container volume that you can.
...............
I think that most members would not like to mess with mercury droplets and vapours,
so throwing a bunch of sulphur powder in the bag, sealing the bag, then maybe a second bag, is a good option for disposal to a landfill.
Be aware that your bag is already full of mercury vapour so take care
but an accidental whiff of mercury vapour is almost harmless so do not panic too much.
A lung-full would require a medical check ... I believe.
For recovery I can only think of
incineration/vapourisation then condensation of the mercury vapour.
conversion to a soluble mercury salt then reduction to mercury metal.
Both options are significantly hazardous - I would not try.
(unless as an experiment in itself, which is unlikely)
.......
no legal liabilities accepted - do your own research
CAUTION : Hobby Chemist, not Professional or even Amateur
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j_sum1
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Again, perspective. Elemental mercury is not a death sentence. Chronic exposure is to be avoided for sure. But minimal short-term exposure should not
induce panic.
Check the following situation involving 130g of Hg.
At my previous house when my lab was an outdoor shed, I once had a spill of about 0.1mL. The floor was very rough, cracked and dirty concrete. (The
shed was once a chook pen and there were numerous chicken footprints in the concrete.) The mercury dropped into a crack and there was no possibility
of extracting it. My only option was to sweep the floor with sulfur and let it be.
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Keras
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Unfortunately while elemental mercury may be innocuous to some extent, organomercury compounds are lethal. IN memoriam Karen Wetterhahn.
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currawong
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Thanks for all the responses, I think I will opt for the original idea of adding sulfur powder to the bag and disposing of it with regular household
waste.
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j_sum1
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True, Keras.
But I am never going to have organic mercury in my lab. I think I am the same as most people on that one.
I don't know if my body can make organomercury compounds internally. But simple precautions will stop that happening. I consider working cleanly and
managing all waste and contamination to be a greater challenge.
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Precipitates
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Quote: Originally posted by Sulaiman  |
humans also release thousands of tons of mercury into the atmosphere every year by burning fossil fuels
(about 0.5g/human)
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This would probably be my idea. Incineration outside.
It's debatable whether this is worse for the environment than sending a plastic bag to landfill, which, depending on the councils garbage policies,
may end up being burnt anyway, or the mercury existing indefinitely in a plastic bag.
Also a bag full of sulfur may arouse suspicion, leading the council to checks its contents, and to subsequently "freak-out" if they discover mercury,
which may have only partially converted to mercury sulfide.
Incineration is not ideal, but may strike a balance between personal and environmental protection. Unless you find somewhere willing to accept
mercury, I wouldn't feel comfortable sending it anywhere, especially after making that phone call.
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Dr.Bob
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Bunring the waste would volatilize the mercury, which seems like a terrible idea. I like the Zn or S ideas and then landfill. As stated, there is a
lot of Hg in the world, and most is safely underground, where it will complex or amalgamate with other stuff.
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BromicAcid
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Speaking of - where did the mercury go... many of the rivers in California contain disturbing quantities of elemental mercury from the old gold rush
days.
I remember watching a documentary once where someone was panning for gold in the river and ended up with blobs of mercury in their pan. I've seen
other sources over the years point it out as well. I would think once it hit the soil that it would just keep sinking but perhaps that's not the
case.
https://pubs.usgs.gov/fs/2005/3014/
They have a photograph of some mercury they panned out in this article.
[Edited on 8/21/2025 by BromicAcid]
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Radiums Lab
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HgS is pretty safe because of its low solubility. Some people apply it on their foreheads here.
Water is dangerous if you don't know how to handle it, elemental fluorine (F₂) on the other hand is pretty tame if you know what you are doing.
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Precipitates
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It is, but so is knowingly violating the law, especially when it has been recently shown how insanely out of proportion these things can easily be
blown. Cue the headline:
"Citizen sends HAZARDOUS mercury waste to landfill. Health officials are assessing exposure of the workers. The mercury had been covered in sulphur
and HIDDEN in an unlabelled bag."
| Quote: Originally posted by Dr.Bob | | I like the Zn or S ideas and then landfill. As stated, there is a lot of Hg in the world, and most is safely underground, where it will complex or
amalgamate with other stuff. |
Another thing that hasn't been suggested is just to go to a university with it. They will have the ability to dispose of it legally, and are less
likely, one would hope, to overreact.
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bariumbromate
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also oxidized or impure mercury does not evaporate, cody's lab showed that
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bariumbromate
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mercury reacts with sulfur slowly to form mercury sulfide
AND most old aircon units actually have a large mercury tilt switch in them so 1g of mercury sulfide is nothing
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BromicAcid
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The county I live in has a chemical disposal day about 3 times a year. For $25 you can bring whatever you want and they will get rid of it. They
would have no problem taking care of your mercury waste. Might want to give that a search. I've used it several times in the past - though not for
home chemistry stuff. Back when I did oil painting I'd bring all of my used mineral spirits to them with a bunch of cadmium sediment at the bottom
and they never cared.
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