• Email Us: [email protected]
  • Contact Us: +1 718 874 1545
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar

Medical Market Report

  • Home
  • All Reports
  • About Us
  • Contact Us

What Happens If You Touch Mercury?

May 26, 2023 by Deborah Bloomfield

Mercury is known for its toxicity and for causing health problems around the world and throughout history. But humans are very curious about what’s dangerous and so the question comes up often: Can you touch mercury with your bare hands safely? The answer, surprisingly, is yes.

Mercury is not absorbed through our skin, so it is ok to touch it without suffering any ill effects. Mercury has a viscosity between that of water and whole milk, but a much higher density. It’s 13 times as dense as water so a major surprise would be just how heavy a few drops of mercury in the palm of your hand would be.

Advertisement

Now, just because the skin doesn’t absorb it doesn’t mean it should be handled carelessly. If you have any cuts and mercury enters your bloodstream, that is extremely dangerous. Another concern is if small droplets separate and turn into vapor. The skin can absorb mercury vapor but inhalation is by far the easiest way for mercury to enter our body and accumulate there.  

What happens if you swallow mercury?

So, you read the bit about water and whole milk and accidentally drunk the mercury on your hands. Well, the good news is that you are not going to die because swallowing elemental mercury, fortunately, is a terrible way to absorb it. Less than 0.01 percent of elemental mercury is taken in by the gut.

Mercury poisoning is often a consequence of an accumulation of the metal either through salts or organic compounds. Human activities that release mercury into the environment are coal burning and gold mining. A lot of the mercury ingested comes from eating fish higher in the food chain that have accumulated mercury compounds by eating smaller fish. Still, studies have shown that even with the risk of mercury accumulation, eating fish is still beneficial overall.

How dangerous is mercury?

Mercury is toxic and while elemental mercury can be handled even with bare hands (with the above caveats) there are inorganic salts of mercury that are corrosive to the skin, eyes, and the gastrointestinal tract.

Advertisement

In general, mercury poisoning is rare but it can become less so for people heavily reliant on a fish diet as well as mining communities.

What does mercury do to the body?

Mercury and its compounds affect the central and peripheral nervous system as well as the kidneys. It can cause kidney failure, tremors, insomnia, memory loss, neuromuscular effects, headaches, and cognitive and motor dysfunction. Mercury poisoning has also been associated with a reduction in intelligence. Symptoms of poisoning include muscular weakness, poor coordination, as well as numbness in hands and feet.

So yes, you could safely hold mercury in your bare hands. But just because you could doesn’t mean you should.

All “explainer” articles are confirmed by fact checkers to be correct at time of publishing. Text, images, and links may be edited, removed, or added to at a later date to keep information current. 

Advertisement

The content of this article is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of qualified health providers with questions you may have regarding medical conditions.  

Deborah Bloomfield
Deborah Bloomfield

Related posts:

  1. Canadian PM Trudeau not sorry for snapping at protester who insulted his wife
  2. Cricket-Kohli becomes first Indian to reach 10,000 runs in T20 cricket
  3. Congo’s $6 billion China mining deal ‘unconscionable’, says draft report
  4. Man Waggling His Willy At Leopards Found On World’s Earliest Narrative Art

Source Link: What Happens If You Touch Mercury?

Filed Under: News

Primary Sidebar

  • Scientists Perplexed By 407-Million-Year-Old Fossilized Plant That Doesn’t Follow The Fibonacci Sequence
  • This Giant Goldfish Hybrid Weighs As Much As A 10-Year-Old – A Stark Warning About Dumping Pets
  • Scientists Gave Mice Neanderthal And Denisovan Genes. The Results Were Intriguing
  • 2024 Saw Higher Levels Of Carbon Dioxide In The Atmosphere Than Ever Before
  • Halloween Fireballs Will Grace Our Skies As The Taurid Meteor Showers Arrive
  • Newly Discovered Hunting Megastructures Suggest Pre-Bronze Age Societies More Sophisticated Than Previously Thought
  • What Is Spectroscopy And Why Is It So Important To Science?
  • Parkinson’s “Trigger” Seen For The First Time: Scientists Image The Toxic Molecules Inside The Human Brain
  • What Flying Animals Exist That Are Not Birds?
  • DNA Evidence Uncovers Surprising Origins Of Native Americans
  • Single Gene Swap “Transfers A Behavior” Between Two Species For The First Time
  • Interstellar Object 3I/ATLAS Has A Rare “Anti-Tail”, New Observations Confirm
  • Asteroid Apophis: Animation Shows Asteroid’s Nail-Biting Close Approach To Earth In 2029
  • Titan Breaks A Key Chemistry Rule: What That Means For Alien Life
  • Scientists Studied “Chicago Rat Hole” – They Have Bad News, The South Atlantic’s Magnetic Field Weak Spot Is Growing, And Much More This Week
  • Could This Be The Real Reason Humans Survived And Neanderthals Died Out?
  • Newly Discovered Snail Species Named After Studio Ghibli Co-Founder Is A Hairy Beauty
  • 2025 SC79 Is The Second-Fastest Asteroid Ever Found – And Only The Second Within Venus’ Orbit
  • When Red Devil Spiders Arrived On A New Island, Their Genome Dramatically Shrank In Half
  • Is This The World’s Oldest Story? Ancient Human Tale About The Seven Sisters May Be From 100,000 BCE
  • Business
  • Health
  • News
  • Science
  • Technology
  • +1 718 874 1545
  • +91 78878 22626
  • [email protected]
Office Address
Prudour Pvt. Ltd. 420 Lexington Avenue Suite 300 New York City, NY 10170.

Powered by Prudour Network

Copyrights © 2025 · Medical Market Report. All Rights Reserved.

Go to mobile version