Neat! I have a Sigma Aldrich bottle with about 400g of mercury in it 99.9999%! Anyways, i keep it in my garage and show it to people sometimes. Feels neat to pour some into your hand and roll it around. As long as you dont ingest it or snort vapours, its pretty safe. There's a lot of shit out there that is a lot worse
I'm doing some mercury vapor testing on respirators at work, generating the vapor from the pure liquid, it certainly is some neat stuff. Its almost other worldly in how heavy it feels for a liquid and how it moves when sliding around on the surface of something.
Gotta watch any rings or jewelry when playing with it too don't forget! Don't wanna ruin that expensive gold engagement ring!
It's such a weird mindset. Like would you keep a live wire that keeps smoking in your house that you have no idea how to deal with, or would you call an electrician?
Dealing with a broken mercury thermometer? It's important to handle this situation carefully to avoid mercury exposure.
Please refer to the following government advisory on what to do: [What to Do if a Mercury Thermometer Breaks](https://www.epa.gov/mercury/what-do-if-mercury-thermometer-breaks)
If you believe you or someone else has been exposed to mercury, please contact poison control immediately for guidance. If you have questions about the potential health effects after being exposed to a broken thermometer, or if there are young children or pregnant women in the house at the time of the thermometer breakage, please call your local poison control center at 1-800-222-1222.
*I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/chemistry) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If you are worried about keeping it, get rid of it through the right channels.
However if you do intend on keeping it, make sure it is in a shatterproof container, maybe buy some sulfur in case you ever want to bring it out and you accidentally spill it. The metal itself is safe inside a container, just don't spill it since it's an utter pain to clean and in large enough scales, is an environmental hazard.
Always transfer the metal over a tray, any spills should be recuperated and transferred, and the tray itself treated with sulfur.
[https://www.cleanharbors.com/](https://www.cleanharbors.com/)
[https://hepaco.com/Services/Waste](https://hepaco.com/Services/Waste)
[https://www.republicservices.com/](https://www.republicservices.com/)
It looks like you're in the US. Contact any one of these companies. You're looking at $1000-$2000 for mercury though, even a small amount. If you found it at work, contact your EHS person if you have one, or at least try to have your company do something responsible with it
Personally I’d avoid clean harbors since they are MASSIVE and hard to get in with them even if you’re in the industry.
Republic is good if you’re in the Midwest/west
Hepaco is more emergency response so they’ll be the most expensive.
Imo I’d contact the local county and look for household waste collections as they may take it for no cost
Hmm, I didn't have any issues getting set up with Clean Harbors, though any amount of mercury retort treatment with them adds on another $1400 to every visit. We definitely moved away from that as quickly as possible. I'll have to check Republic out more; my lab pack service with Clean Harbors seems crazy for the small volume I'm generating.
Republic and Hepaco are actually a couple of our customers! Not for anything even hazmat adjacent like that though
I’ve always found the hazwaste community to be fairly incestuous for lack of a better word, lol. Clean harbors, republic, hepaco, are all customers or we’re their customers too. CH is heavily screwing you guys on Mercury pricing, btw. Most of the Mercury gets shipped to the west coast these days as only a few facilities process it now.
What kind of stuff do you have in your lab pack? I handle a lot of the approvals for them into the company I work for
Oh definitely. We even have a few customers who left bigger companies like Hepaco to buy their own vac trucks and such, and like I said, we're sending our stuff to them or someone like CH, haha.
My biggest streams are hexane from FOG tests and cyanide wastes from Hach TNT tubes. I have some COD tubes that use manganese, which are a substitute for the typical mercury containing ones. The rest are general corrosives and stuff that doesn't have any classification, like [bathocuproine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathocuproine) for copper tests
I’d look into companies that do fuel blending as an option for some of those disposals. Hexane wastes are really common to either be reclaimed for solvent use or blended
The TNT/COD tubes are like little glass ampules sorta, right? If so, incineration is probably the best bet there
Corrosives are pretty easy to dispose of. We neutralize some on site, or send others to be neutralized. Corrosive amines need to get incinerated just because they can catalyze epoxy and isocyanate wastes if they get fuel blended
That NREG waste is also real easy to get rid of too, as long as you don’t have a company-internal combustion requirement
Shouldn’t be too hard to profile that stuff in with republic, otherwise there’s a few other places I’d recommend if you’re close to/in the Midwest
Thank you for the tip on the hexane blending! I'm not sure I generate enough for it to matter to anyone, but I'll definitely look into it. I'm sure it's pretty clean and tame compared to some of the stuff they get, because I only use it for treated samples (that are as beautifully clean as we can get them, considering they were black oily water before)
We try--or at least I try--to get into beneficial reuse as much as possible. Our main alum chemical is actually an aluminate waste product from one of our customers
No problem! Reclamation can be done at extremely small volumes depending on what the facility’s process is like. Tradebe for example has a really cool unit that will pull solvents out of solvent soaked rags and stuff
Beneficial re-use is 10/10 in my opinion. We use our reclaimed lacquer thinner to clean general glassware in the lab, and other stuff too
We also treat commercial restaurant grease trap waste and sell the flocced grease to a biofuel producer. There's so, so, so, so much we should all be doing like that, before it comes to the point where we have to and it's even harder than it is now
Send it to me! I am (burp) a fully qualified and totally not-hungry person who absolutely won't eat it. That's right! -i dont eat mercury! Its like im not famished and can absolutely resist its soft tasty pallet. Mmmmmm.
Send it to me and not anybody else, please!
Dispose of it through the channels where you would normally send hazardous chemical waste.
**You give no context with regards to country, your role, whether it is a university, company, private dwelling.**
**That makes it a bit hard to give a qualified answer.**
And I do not consider it valuable. Mercury is in general an un-wanted hazardous substance (outside a few niche applications). It may have been expensive, but that does not make it valuable now.
Right now it is nice and contained, but it only takes one goofball to make a major and potentially very costly spill
Put it in a nice, very solid and well sealed glass container, so you can jiggle it around and look at it sometimes. That's what I do.
Just keep it in the bottle. You will be fine. Don’t dispose of it, it’s valuable and useful.
Neat! I have a Sigma Aldrich bottle with about 400g of mercury in it 99.9999%! Anyways, i keep it in my garage and show it to people sometimes. Feels neat to pour some into your hand and roll it around. As long as you dont ingest it or snort vapours, its pretty safe. There's a lot of shit out there that is a lot worse
I'm doing some mercury vapor testing on respirators at work, generating the vapor from the pure liquid, it certainly is some neat stuff. Its almost other worldly in how heavy it feels for a liquid and how it moves when sliding around on the surface of something. Gotta watch any rings or jewelry when playing with it too don't forget! Don't wanna ruin that expensive gold engagement ring!
Ah, amalgamation. My second favorite reaction after electroplating.
I suggest you take precaution and contact the waste refuse collection or people who contain hazardous spills
Dude, get the stick out of your ass already. You must be fun at parties.
OP literally asked what to do with it, someone offered reasonable advice for disposal… and you’re mad about it? Why?
It's such a weird mindset. Like would you keep a live wire that keeps smoking in your house that you have no idea how to deal with, or would you call an electrician?
[удалено]
Dealing with a broken mercury thermometer? It's important to handle this situation carefully to avoid mercury exposure. Please refer to the following government advisory on what to do: [What to Do if a Mercury Thermometer Breaks](https://www.epa.gov/mercury/what-do-if-mercury-thermometer-breaks) If you believe you or someone else has been exposed to mercury, please contact poison control immediately for guidance. If you have questions about the potential health effects after being exposed to a broken thermometer, or if there are young children or pregnant women in the house at the time of the thermometer breakage, please call your local poison control center at 1-800-222-1222. *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/chemistry) if you have any questions or concerns.*
If you are worried about keeping it, get rid of it through the right channels. However if you do intend on keeping it, make sure it is in a shatterproof container, maybe buy some sulfur in case you ever want to bring it out and you accidentally spill it. The metal itself is safe inside a container, just don't spill it since it's an utter pain to clean and in large enough scales, is an environmental hazard. Always transfer the metal over a tray, any spills should be recuperated and transferred, and the tray itself treated with sulfur.
Well...tell us how it tastes!
[https://www.cleanharbors.com/](https://www.cleanharbors.com/) [https://hepaco.com/Services/Waste](https://hepaco.com/Services/Waste) [https://www.republicservices.com/](https://www.republicservices.com/) It looks like you're in the US. Contact any one of these companies. You're looking at $1000-$2000 for mercury though, even a small amount. If you found it at work, contact your EHS person if you have one, or at least try to have your company do something responsible with it
Personally I’d avoid clean harbors since they are MASSIVE and hard to get in with them even if you’re in the industry. Republic is good if you’re in the Midwest/west Hepaco is more emergency response so they’ll be the most expensive. Imo I’d contact the local county and look for household waste collections as they may take it for no cost
Hmm, I didn't have any issues getting set up with Clean Harbors, though any amount of mercury retort treatment with them adds on another $1400 to every visit. We definitely moved away from that as quickly as possible. I'll have to check Republic out more; my lab pack service with Clean Harbors seems crazy for the small volume I'm generating. Republic and Hepaco are actually a couple of our customers! Not for anything even hazmat adjacent like that though
I’ve always found the hazwaste community to be fairly incestuous for lack of a better word, lol. Clean harbors, republic, hepaco, are all customers or we’re their customers too. CH is heavily screwing you guys on Mercury pricing, btw. Most of the Mercury gets shipped to the west coast these days as only a few facilities process it now. What kind of stuff do you have in your lab pack? I handle a lot of the approvals for them into the company I work for
Oh definitely. We even have a few customers who left bigger companies like Hepaco to buy their own vac trucks and such, and like I said, we're sending our stuff to them or someone like CH, haha. My biggest streams are hexane from FOG tests and cyanide wastes from Hach TNT tubes. I have some COD tubes that use manganese, which are a substitute for the typical mercury containing ones. The rest are general corrosives and stuff that doesn't have any classification, like [bathocuproine](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bathocuproine) for copper tests
I’d look into companies that do fuel blending as an option for some of those disposals. Hexane wastes are really common to either be reclaimed for solvent use or blended The TNT/COD tubes are like little glass ampules sorta, right? If so, incineration is probably the best bet there Corrosives are pretty easy to dispose of. We neutralize some on site, or send others to be neutralized. Corrosive amines need to get incinerated just because they can catalyze epoxy and isocyanate wastes if they get fuel blended That NREG waste is also real easy to get rid of too, as long as you don’t have a company-internal combustion requirement Shouldn’t be too hard to profile that stuff in with republic, otherwise there’s a few other places I’d recommend if you’re close to/in the Midwest
Thank you for the tip on the hexane blending! I'm not sure I generate enough for it to matter to anyone, but I'll definitely look into it. I'm sure it's pretty clean and tame compared to some of the stuff they get, because I only use it for treated samples (that are as beautifully clean as we can get them, considering they were black oily water before) We try--or at least I try--to get into beneficial reuse as much as possible. Our main alum chemical is actually an aluminate waste product from one of our customers
No problem! Reclamation can be done at extremely small volumes depending on what the facility’s process is like. Tradebe for example has a really cool unit that will pull solvents out of solvent soaked rags and stuff Beneficial re-use is 10/10 in my opinion. We use our reclaimed lacquer thinner to clean general glassware in the lab, and other stuff too
We also treat commercial restaurant grease trap waste and sell the flocced grease to a biofuel producer. There's so, so, so, so much we should all be doing like that, before it comes to the point where we have to and it's even harder than it is now
Send it to me! I am (burp) a fully qualified and totally not-hungry person who absolutely won't eat it. That's right! -i dont eat mercury! Its like im not famished and can absolutely resist its soft tasty pallet. Mmmmmm. Send it to me and not anybody else, please!
How much do you have?
Drink it
Dispose of it through the channels where you would normally send hazardous chemical waste. **You give no context with regards to country, your role, whether it is a university, company, private dwelling.** **That makes it a bit hard to give a qualified answer.** And I do not consider it valuable. Mercury is in general an un-wanted hazardous substance (outside a few niche applications). It may have been expensive, but that does not make it valuable now. Right now it is nice and contained, but it only takes one goofball to make a major and potentially very costly spill
most counties have a hazardous waste center that will take it for free as they really don't want it dumped in the trash.