Lead and Mercury?

[Drew Wiley]

These wretched pseudo-energy-efficient CFL light bulbs being sold in the jillions right now contain mercury. But they're a bad idea in a darkroom anyway due to
afterglow and horrible color viewing characteristics, which obviously effect how you evaluate the effect of toning black and white prints, and not just color printing per se. And most of them don't last anywhere near as long as they claim, so are a bad value to begin with. They are also unreliable in damp situations like a sink room. Hopefully improved LED lighting will drive them extinct in the near future. Vinyl compounds have already been mentioned. They can smudge up an exposed lens on an enlarger just like vinyl dashboards do to windshields. I recently acquired a pair of import gloves where the alleged "rubber" actually rubbed off on prints. I like something that slips on and off in the darkroom, with a big cuff, when handling prints in trays. In film processing I use disposable thin nitrile gloves instead. But deliberate false labeling and an obscene abuse of plasticizers on vinyl products is a plague at the moment. People are getting skin
rashes all over the place and can't figure it out, from these idiotic excercise wrist monitors to camping tents. Duuuh. "Made in China" pretty much explains it.

[ic-racer]

Mercury thermometers and lead solder joints in my darkroom. I try not to eat or drink either of them.

[Drew Wiley]

Just move to Flint, Michigan.

[Jim Jones]

There is a tendency for people to hear that certain elements and compounds are dangerous (true, in large enough quantities), and go overboard in protesting their use. With care, they are safe. Even when used casually, they rarely harm. Long ago I made a mercury switch by squeezing the mercury out of a dead mercury battery and sealing it into a small neon bulb. Mercury was a fascinating element to play with 70 years ago, and I'm still healthy. Casting lead bullets and eating meat that had been brought down by lead shot or bullets hasn't done any damage, either. We can't live without oxygen, and too much of it is dangerous or fatal.

I despise CFLs. They can last long and use less electricity in some applications. They don't fit some fixtures. One did illuminate the length of my house 24 hours a day for three years before failing, but incandescent lamps at low (and inefficient) voltages last as long. Some CFLs emit obnoxious light and aren't reliable in cold environments. Neon bulbs were good for some things. So were electroluminescent panels. That may be another technology that should be perfected.

[Andrew O'Neill]

My pencil....

[Drew Wiley]

Eating lead bullet meat came very very close to exterminating California condors forever, and isn't very good for fillings in human teeth either, as every quail
or duck hunter knows (Crruunch!). Also very bad for bottom-diving ducks who accidentally scoop shot off the bottom. I see cases of lead paint poisoning all the
time. But there are morons even in Congress that claim its harmless unless you're pregnant or an infant. Mercury poisoning of house painters was limited to a
brief era when mercury driers were incorporated in early latex wall primers; but some of those cases are horrific in terms of psychological damage. Here we have old mercury ore(cinnabar) mines at the south end of the Bay, which were active during the gold rush. Some of it gets transitioned into the absorbable form in the marshes and poisons the food chain. But most of the reason you don't want to east too many fish from the SF Bay is that all that "quicksilver" has actually worked its way clear downriver from the Gold Rush era up in the Mother Lode, and finally ended up in the Bay. There is a worker here whose wife made him tunafish sandwiches every day for years, then he ended up with behavioral problems and had to be detoxified. My own primary care physician years ago was so paranoid about the alleged ills of high cholesterol foods that he almost lived on water-packed tuna. He literally got hauled off to the asylum. All things in moderation. And some things in the darkroom be damn careful with, like chromium salts, hydroxide, potassium permangenate, glacial acetic acid.

[Peter De Smidt]

Victor Mercury Intensifier.

[LabRat]

But if you are concerned if there's something in your environment, for piece of mind, have testing done for the suspected contaminants so you can rule out different sources and sleep easier...

Good luck!!!

Steve K

[Pierre 2]

And of course, if your house has iron drain pipes, the toilet adjacent to the darkroom could have a very big lead insert in the drain, from just under the bee's wax ring. Those lead insert are probably the easiest way to gain access to a big chunk of lead cheap : Available at any hardware store.

And I understand old fluorescent tubes may have up to a tablespoon of liquid mercury inside (although I suspect a teaspoon maybe more typical...).

In a different perspective, if your are using any electronic device, there is a good chance that some of the gold that it contains was obtained through the use of less than optimal mercury process (they were talking about this on public radio today, in a discussion of modern slavery).

[JMO]

Regarding what is "toxic" and under what circumstances and doses, one should consider that even water is "toxic" depending on the dose and exposure. Wikipedia has a page on "water intoxication" you may find interesting, and such "intoxication," which can even lead to death (we're not talking about drowning), is unfortunately not uncommon in today's world. Excessive water intake can be "toxic" when it leads to hypornatremia or low sodium levels in the blood serum which cause serious problems to functioning of your nervous system. Exposure to lead, mercury and certain other "toxic" heavy metals is generally a long-term or "chronic" risk situation. As others have pointed out in this thread, if you take basic care to not eat, drink or inhale fumes containing such heavy metals as lead and mercury, then you will have little risk from those "toxic" elements because you have sufficiently limited your personal exposure and dose. Therefore, it is important to know the likely potential sources of those substances (some recounted in this thread), so you can take special care around those sources. It is comforting to know that your skin and your digestive system are fairly good (though not perfect) barriers to entry of many substances into your body and its blood serum. ...