Talk:Mercury (element)

Template:Vital article

Methylmercury

in the introduction of the article it says mercury poisoning can result from water soluble forms such as mercury chloride and methylmerury. This is incorrect as methyl mercury is lipophylic and not water soluble.

185.208.241.1 (talk) 20:56, 18 September 2019 (UTC)

• I agree with this. This should be changed. Marcos [Tupungato] (talk) 12:51, 2 July 2020 (UTC)

It seems that Methylmercury is an ion, so should form water soluble compounds. Gah4 (talk) 12:15, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

"commonly known as quicksilver"

Is mercury "commonly known as quicksilver"? By whom? I am a native speaker of English currently doing a humanities PhD and it is certainly not a commonly known synonym with any group under the age of 40 I have ever been associated with. Is "commonly known as quicksilver by older people" more accurate? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 144.214.114.51 (talk) 22:44, 21 March 2020 (UTC)

Adding "by older people" isn't that accurate, plenty of people use the term who are young SalmonSalmonSalmon (talk) 22:02, 20 January 2023 (UTC)

As mentioned in the previous comment, the word quicksilver is not a common name for mercury. It may have been known by that name prior to the 18th century through to the very early 19th century, but the use of that expression has seen a gradual decline through-out that period, to the point of being unheard of by the mid 19th century. I am a University educated English-speaking Canadian in my mid-70s and have been fascinated with this element since my childhood. As of early 2021, having just read this Wikipedia article, I was surprised by the inclusion of the word Quicksilver, as a commonly used alternative word for Mercury. Up until this time, I'd have never of it before. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Michaelfleischer1 (talk • contribs) 03:36, 10 January 2021 (UTC)

Ancient names are commonly known, if not commonly used. I knew it pretty far back, I suspect related to the Latin name. Everyone knows about quicksand, though few have seen it. I suspect most know about quicksilver, especially as it is used for other things for commercial reasons. Again, commonly known but not commonly used. Gah4 (talk) 12:19, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Marine Chemistry

Mercury In The Ocean

Biogeochemical cycling of mercury (Hg) is lacking from research in the open ocean . Little studies have shown the link between the enrichment of sediments from organic matter and how mercury and methylmercury (MeHg) is driven by the organic matter in submarine canyons. Inorganic mercury converts into methylmercury in the marine environment that is readily assimilated into phytoplankton and transferred up the food web to higher trophic levels .

Marine Animals

Methylmercury in found in wildlife and seafood consumers such as fish, birds and many marine mammals such as Odontocetes (toothed whales) . Bottlenose dolphins inhabiting the Indian River Lagoon in Florida (IRL) have been reported to have the highest concentrations of total mercury, in the blood and skin, in the world . IRL dolphins’ prey upon fish species that are known to have higher concentrations of mercury, 3-12 times higher than the same species located in Charleston, South Carolina. These species include spotted seatrout, Atlantic croaker, red drum, striped mullet, and pinfish, many of which humans consume.

Ocean Sedimentation

Mercury moves throughout the environment easily moving to the ocean from atmospheric deposition and with particle-reactive forms traveling to soils and rivers ultimately leading to the ocean . As mercury is emitted into the atmosphere from anthropogenic and natural sources, it circulates the globe by atmospheric general circulation (GEM) and is deposited into the oceans . Elemental mercury is deposited into ocean sediments by transitioning from gaseous mercury (Hgo) to reactive mercury (Hg2+) in the process of photochemically oxidizing . Dry and wet deposition deposits Hg2+ onto the surface of the ocean, where it is either re-emitted back into the atmosphere or absorbed into particulate matter producing Hg (HgP), eventually depositing into ocean sediment.

01:58, 24 November 2020‎ User:Hayyylyn

References

A seeming contradiction in this paragraph on the Physical properties

A complete explanation of mercury's extreme volatility delves deep into the realm of quantum physics, but it can be summarized as follows: mercury has a unique electron configuration where electrons fill up all the available 1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p, 3d, 4s, 4p, 4d, 4f, 5s, 5p, 5d, and 6s subshells. Because this configuration strongly resists removal of an electron, mercury behaves similarly to noble gases, which form weak bonds and hence melt at low temperatures.

-- "extreme volatility" seems to contradict with later statement that mercury behaves similarly to noble gases, doesn't it? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mtodorov 69 (talk • contribs)

Don't noble gas extreme volatile? --Nucleus hydro elemon (talk) 11:06, 25 December 2021 (UTC)

Etymology of hydrargyrum

Can a link to the wiktionary page for hydrargyrum be added? I opened that page because I was wondering about the origin of the "Hg" symbol for mercury. Having that link would be handy.

https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/hydrargyrum — Preceding unsigned comment added by Ewen-lbh (talk • contribs) 11:22, 23 January 2022 (UTC)

Ancient Egyptian mythology behind the element Mercury.

The reason that mercury was buried in Ancient Egyptian tombs, especially those of high authority or social class, was because the Ancient Egyptians believed that mercury made it so that the tombs would be forever protected by any curses or evil, however in some case of highly protected areas the mercury would be present so that the believed evil/curse within the buried would be kept in. — Preceding unsigned comment added by AnOnYmOuSfAlL (talk • contribs) 16:43, 10 April 2022 (UTC)

The section on releases in the environment is outdated

References for the section on environmental mercury releases come from ~2007, with outdated estimates for the proportion of mercury released by volcanoes vs. human sources and the contributions of different human sources. The 2018 Global Mercury Assessment from the UN Environment Programme is our best recent source of expert-reviewed information on environmental mercury cycling (https://www.unep.org/resources/publication/global-mercury-assessment-2018?_ga=2.114151619.513073068.1660741466-813287979.1634065220). This report states that 10% of mercury emissions are from volcanoes, 30% from current human emissions, and 60% recycling of historical human-driven mercury emissions. Also, the major human source is now thought to be artisanal and small-scale gold mining (38%), stationary combustion of fossil fuels and biomass (24%, primarily from coal burning), non-ferrous metal production (15%), cement production (11%), waste from mercury-added products (7%), ferrous metal production (2%), and other sources (2%). 13:17, 17 August 2022 (UTC) AtmosOstrich (talk) 13:17, 17 August 2022 (UTC)

Citogenesis

I found this paper from 2017 that seems to have lifted a sentence directly from this page ("Mercury ores usually occur in very young orogenic belts where rock of high density are forced to the crust of the Earth, often in hot springs or other volcanic regions.") The sentence had already been on Wikipedia for 11 years (here's the corresponding original edit) when the paper was published.

Other than being pretty poor form, this plagiarism doesn't affect the main thrust of the paper. The publisher, Elsevier, does a great job of discouraging plagiarism reports, so I won't spend any more time on this. But I thought I'd note it here, and I'll remove the sentence as there doesn't now seem to be a source to back it up. Tserton (talk) 09:47, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Sources for future article expansion

Obviously the current #History section is terrible. It talks about Qin Shi Huang—which should really be Shi Huangdi or Qin Shihuang, but that's a whole separate decades-long fight on his talk page—in a weird hypercorrect misuse of pinyin but at least it mentions him. On the other hand, it just drops the ball 500 years in past, imagining that alchemy was a thing people spontaneously got over. At minimum it needs links to Nuck and the guys who continued to apply mercury—including self-injections—in anatomical studies and the people who moved that field forward and finally ended the practice. That all grew out of alchemical ideas but also had its own logic and story. See esp.

• Hendriksen, Marieke M.A. (October 2015), "Anatomical Mercury: Changing Understandings of Quicksilver, Blood, and the Lymphatic System, 1650–1800" (PDF), Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, vol. 70, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 516–548.

which could support the material that needs to be worked into #History, #Historical uses, and #Toxicity. Apparently (i.a.) it was essential in the studies that figured out the existence and main functions of the lymphatic system. — LlywelynII 19:48, 21 November 2022 (UTC)

Processed Mercury is used in Ayurveda (Indian Medical science) immensely

An in-depth knowledge about how to process and use Mercury as a 'medicine' for maintaining a healthy body in found in literature dating back to 8th century, in India. Acharya Nagarjuna is considered as the Father of Rasa-Shastra (science of Mercury, or science of metals/minerals).

For more details: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338208757_USE_OF_PURIFIED_MERCURY_IN_AYURVEDA_AND_ITS_SAFETY_EVALUATION DrArunaIyngrRao (talk) 10:43, 4 July 2023 (UTC)

That's a preprint that has not been peer-reviewed. Where it cites sources, they are often questionable--including citations to Wikipedia. Heck, the preprint plagiarizes this very article. It happily copy-pastes the abstracts of other papers and regurgitates their conclusions without any critical examination. (For example, this paper concludes that the mercury in herbal blend Arogyavardhini vati is harmless to brain, kidney and liver—but never actually does a measurement of mercury concentration in the mixture. The preprint author blithely cites this paper as an example of the innocuousness of mercury in Ayurvedic preparations.) Finally, the author provides a credulous account of his own father's mercury-based anti-cancer wonder drug--which has failed to succeed in trials. TenOfAllTrades(talk) 23:56, 4 July 2023 (UTC)