Mercury users please come forward.

[Gerald C Koch]

An old magicians trick is to mold a coin from gallium metal. When placed in the hand the coin will melt due to a very low melting point ~27C. Gallium is non-toxic and a better choice than mercury for the trick you mention.

 

[Truzi]

In high school I wanted to be a magician - but never had any mercury. I still have a chunk of sodium, though.

I still have a couple silver-amalgam fillings; one developed a fissure and will be replaced with another silver filling. In some spots, for some cavities, it's still the best material.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Mercury was heavily mined in the form of cinnabar for use in gold extraction during the famous Calif gold rush. But after it got washed down
the creeks and rivers it changed into hazardous form, and tends to collect in certain fish. I have a co-worker who ate tunafish sandwiches
almost every day who had to be treated for mercury poisoning, and once had a doctor who went berserk for the same reason, and got carted off to the funny farm. But the worst cases of mercury poisoning I see are older house painters who worked with a lot of early latex primers (ca 1950's) which contained mercury. The effect is pretty ugly. Kidneys and liver get all messed up, behavior gets mean and unpredictable. Not just mad hatter, but mean hatter. I certainly wouldn't want to be around mercury fumes either. Fume hoods were invented for a reason. Thanks goodness we're living in a more modern age, when all we have to worry about is ordinary light bulbs being
banned, and CFL's containing mercury being mandated!

 

[Roger Cole]

Well, CFLs are not mandated. For that matter, incandescents were not exactly banned. There were just efficiency standards put in place. You can get what are basically incandescent bulbs again (halogen designs) that just meet the new standards, and LEDs are coming on fast. I avoid the CFLs when I can, not because of the mercury but because I don't like the light quality, the flicker, the slow ramp up to full output, the lack of dimmability...

 

[DREW WILEY]

It's the CFL's that are being aggressively marketed right now, and there is nothing cost-effective about them. If they last a month, you're lucky. And cheap halogens are tantamount to insanity, given all the houses that will (and already have) burnt down from the proliferation of
el-cheapo flimsy halogen floor lamps. That and junk open-coil electric heaters. CFL's are still in their adolescence. To get the good ones takes
some bucks. I can't even be around CFL's because of the terrible eye spasms they cause.

 

[frank]

I remember in the early years of grade school, we would mix up asbestos powder with water to make a modeling compound. Not so good.

 

[DREW WILEY]

Artistes abound who will gamble with their health for the sake of an artistic legacy. Nice concept; but when they're miserable and slowly dying, nobody gives a damn about their legacy either. Most people who are that dumb make dumb art anyway.

 

[Truzi]

Well, CFLs are not mandated. For that matter, incandescents were not exactly banned. There were just efficiency standards put in place. You can get what are basically incandescent bulbs again (halogen designs) that just meet the new standards, and LEDs are coming on fast. I avoid the CFLs when I can, not because of the mercury but because I don't like the light quality, the flicker, the slow ramp up to full output, the lack of dimmability...

+1
Unfortunately, what they market now as "100 watt" incandescents don't produce nearly as much light as the old standard. Halogen's aren't to bad. We played with a few CFLs and decided it wasn't worth it. We have enough old incandescents, and I'm waiting for the prices to come down on the good LEDs.

 

[sun of sand]

I had a chance to buy a gallon of Victors Mercury Intensifier
in a glass jar
then Hazmat was notified and everything came to an end

I have Antique Uranyl Nitrate to one day perhaps try a uranotype or just use as toner

 

[DREW WILEY]

LED is getting there, at least if you can drop thirty or forty bucks a bulb, which is not unreasonable for gallery lighting, if you amortize the life
of the bulb (since neither tungsten or CFLs seem to last very long any more). Residential lighting is a different game. ... And I do have some
uranyl nitrate in the lab. Don't think I'd park the little jar atop a box of unexposed film; but there's probably not enough radiation in there to
penetrate the skin, or even to damage a darkroom spider. But because it's depleted uranium commonly known as "yellowcake", I guess someone could get their dander up. But it would probably take seven or eight shiploads of the stuff to make anything nasty out of it. Mercury is a lot more hazardous. But perhaps the worst compounds encountered in alt printing are chromium derivatives.

 

[Gerald C Koch]

Uranyl nitrate is made from depleted uranium. This means that the more radioactive daughter products have been removed. Naturally occurring uranium is >99% U238. This isotope has a half-life of 4.5 billion years. So not much radiation. But it is a heavy metal poison like lead. The really nasty elements are such things like plutonium.