Mercury, toxic to humans, is the only known metallic element that is liquid at standard Earth temperature and pressure and therefore comprises a hazard to children because it is so cool. But many historic human activities have involved the use of mercury, including gold and silver mining, the production of the red pigment vermilion, felt production, and manufacture of mechanical pressure gauges, thermometers and other devices. One guy even made a mercury fountain for the Spanish Pavilion at the 1937 World Exhibition in Paris, now on display at the Fundació Joan Miró in Barcelona.
Mercury, toxic to humans, is the only known metallic element that is liquid at standard Earth temperature and pressure and therefore comprises a hazard to children because it is so cool. But many historic human activities have involved the use of mercury, including gold and silver mining, the production of the red pigment vermilion, felt production, and manufacture of mechanical pressure gauges, thermometers and other devices.
The use of mercury evolved from 1500 to 1900, from a monopoly by silver refiners in the New World to a vast global market that encompassed the western world, China and India. The authors note that a substantial amount of anthropogenic mercury before 1900 was removed from the global mercury biogeochemical cycle via chemical sequestration, either inlike felt and vermilion or as an industrial byproduct in the form of calomel, a solid mercury chloride mineral, buried within a mineral matrix.
"Together with the fact that chemically sequestered mercury played a major role in the mass balance of pre-1900 anthropogenic mercury, it explains the absence of supporting evidence from natural archives for major pulses of mercury emissions in the late 19th century," they write.
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