How dangerous is this? Massive mercury battery leakage in Pulsar

Very dangerous for the watch, probably fatal. Much less so for you if you were sensible and washed your hands after handling.

Absolutely mesmerizing Calder mercury fountain at the Miró Museum in Barcelona.

I think I stood and watched it for ten or fifteen minutes when we visited (the rest of the museum is amazing too).

I used to have a mercury based system to balance a 4 carburetor setup on my motorcycle. The mercury was shipped in a separate vial which was poured into the small reservoir on the Carb Stix. But that was before we got to the point where almost everything sold in California has a warning label on it telling you it's a dangerous product for one reason or another.

I'd rather deal with lead than mercury. (actually some plants will not grow without lead in the soil.) I hate it when the two metals are confused for political gain.

Mercury can be bad. The room temperature stuff is not to harmful. Where it gets bad is when it is vaporized. This is where it gets ingested. The result is that it gets into your brain and plates it causing short circuits. The right amount and well, that was the euphoria the Alchemist were looking for. Too much though and one becomes mad as a hatter.

Mercury also has an affinity for gold. This is the easiest way to refine gold. Coincidentally California has both large quantities of Mercury as well as gold. The former is fount in the SF bay area in the red earth called cinnabar. Back in the 1950s and 1960s this was sold as landscaping material.

The issues happen in the separation process. The mercury gold amalgam is burned in the fireplace. cyanide is used in the bleaching process. The old watchmaking trade journals have a lot of articles on this. The process is known as water gilding and it is really efficient. Back in the day the poorer folk would live upstairs. So the poor would suffer from the effects. It is said that to this day at the inversion level in the Swiss valleys there is a bathtub ring of mercury contamination. Who knows what the effects in the amazon rain forest are.

Some of the bi products of waterguilding are also neural toxins. Can kill instantly. The other use and why mercury is banned in most places in one of the byproducts is used for blasting caps and shell primers. (according to the trade journal.)

The white stuff though may be zinc oxide, which is currently used in sunscreen and make-up. Some batteries what are rechargeable use lead, but these are heavier. Lead oxide, which can also be purple or green, is known as sugar of lead. For most of history this was used to sweeten foods. Lead is naturally sweet, which is why children and animals eat it. Again the effects are synonymous with poverty. The reason for the bans have to do with lost lawsuits, primarily the Sherwin Williams company, which had huge payouts.

As with all things moderation is the critical factor. I once heard that Europeans tend to identify with the larger side of statistics (like winning at a game of chance.) ie one has a 90 percent chance of winning something. American identify with the small side as in we thing we have 10 percent chance of winning something. This is well know in marketing. If you can not win a lottery your odds are better with litigation.

No one ever died from lead in consumer electronics.

-j

Thank you, you’ve just explained why the squirrels eat the lead on my shed roof, something that’s been confusing me for a long time!