Lead and Mercury?

[Struan Gray]

If I read David right, he has already been diagnosed with possible heavy metal poisoning, and is looking for causes. Issues about overprotective legislation aren't really relevant in this case.

I have been trained in decontamination drills for labs and other workspaces, and sources and transport routes of heavy metals are not always obvious to the layman, and often defy common sense. The biggest source of environmental mercury in most Swedish towns comes from dental amalgam vapourised in crematoria. That's not a simple problem to solve, or to track down.

Good luck David, and I hope you get detoxified soon. One final point that occurs: if your symptoms are of general heavy metal poisoning (and not specifically lead and mercury) then it is just possible that your gold or platinum/palladium salts are to blame. It is almost impossible to get poisoning from these elements in metal form, but as compounds there are ways for them to interact with your body chemistry. Talk to your real doctor though, not me.

[neil poulsen]

I believe it's Mercuric Chloride (?) that was used as a negative toner long ago. Very serious stuff; so toxic, that spills are worthy of a haz-mat team. I read one time that Stieglitz had been using it a few days before his death. (Not that there was necessarily a connection.)

I saw some for sale in the EBay Darkroom section a while ago, and the seller had no warnings of its extreme toxicity. I contacted him, and he reluctantly ended the auction.

[Drew Wiley]

This is, in several aspects at least, the front line for me. I have been directly involved in EPA training and licensing of at least two thousand contractors, and have
supplied lead prevention equipment to many, many more. Therefore I have seen with my own eyes many many cases of cumulative lead and mercury poisoning over the years, and it ain't a purty sight! Also many wannabee artistes who got poisoned by all kinds of things, assuming immortal fame was worth risking their
health. Lucky if they got a designer coffin. Most of this is common sense. The current EPA laws concerning lead paint simply gives them the opportunity for legal
enforcement of what have been recommended guidelines for the past several decades. The good news is that now very efficient equipment is readily available
to control much of this and even make work far more efficient and profitable at the same time, if some idiot congressman or bonehead phony contractor doesn't go around claiming poisoning and cancer are actually good for you. Getting chelated for lead is VERY expensive and un-fun, and can't reverse severe cases.
What is happening to people in Flint Mich right now due to contamination in their water supply is unthinkably irresponsible. Sounds like Medieval times. If the
water looks and smells like puke, don't drink it! But undetected trace amounts of pesticides, and how they interact in many unknown ways, is a more subtle
danger. In darkroom practice, the plug is already being pulled on chromium salts in the EU, and it is inevitable that the EPA will follow suit here in the US.

[neil poulsen]

. . . In darkroom practice, the plug is already being pulled on chromium salts in the EU, and it is inevitable that the EPA will follow suit here in the US.

Interesting. I can't believe how casual some of the alternative photographers are about dumping hexa-valent chromium down the drain.

[cuypers1807]

I would have your water supply tested. Also could be in the soil around the house. Also old style dental work can have Mercury (Amalgum).

[Drew Wiley]

There are unbelievable quantities of toxic waste in many of not only our cities which once had a serious hard industrial presence, but sometimes even worse in
rural agricultural areas where pesticides etc have been abused for decades. Right where I'm sitting at this very moment, it takes a special permit even to drill a
test hole in the ground. That's because this area was once ringed by big paint factories as well as various Naval installations. All kinds of lead, chromium, mercury, cadmium, PCB's, and even some radioactive things are in the soil, but efficiently capped off by cement slabs and layers of modern asphalt. The key is to disturb nothing - just leave it there and don't get it in the air at all. Otherwise, literally billions of dollars of hazmat work come into play, and that has to transpire well away from residential or routine work activity. The mere building permit application fee to convert the Colgate plant down the street into a modern Bayer plant was 600K, with hundreds of millions involved in the actual renovation - without even disturbing the soil! But tech industries are contributing
their own kinds of nasties into drain water. I sure as heck wouldn't windsurf out in the Bay where the drains empty, but lot of people do.

[neil poulsen]

I got excited about, and took a workshop on gum over ptpd, where one can add pigment to a ptpd print. It produces an absolutely beautiful print. But learning more about the process, the chromium part of it put me off.

I heard about and investigated a way where one can convert the hexa-valent chromium by product to tri-valent chromium, and then precipitate it out as a metal. Then using filtration, it can be discarded as a solid in the trash. With an ongoing setup, I think that it could be done in a fairly efficient manner. But, I ended up backing away from the whole project.

If I want to do alternative photography, it might as well be silver-gelatin.