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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Dustfreeworld (talk | contribs) at 16:17, 15 October 2023 (→the Joss paper burning is not a common practice: Reply). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Good articleMercury (element) has been listed as one of the Natural sciences good articles under the good article criteria. If you can improve it further, please do so. If it no longer meets these criteria, you can reassess it.
Good topic starMercury (element) is part of the Group 12 elements series, a good topic. This is identified as among the best series of articles produced by the Wikipedia community. If you can update or improve it, please do so.
Article milestones
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April 8, 2006Good article nomineeListed
July 28, 2009Good article reassessmentKept
May 28, 2012Good topic candidatePromoted
Current status: Good article

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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)[reply]

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

"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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

Marine Chemistry

Mercury In The Ocean

Biogeochemical cycling of mercury (Hg) is lacking from research in the open ocean [1]. 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 [2].

Marine Animals

Methylmercury in found in wildlife and seafood consumers such as fish, birds and many marine mammals such as Odontocetes (toothed whales) [3]. 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 [4]. 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 [5]. 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 [6]. Elemental mercury is deposited into ocean sediments by transitioning from gaseous mercury (Hgo) to reactive mercury (Hg2+) in the process of photochemically oxidizing [7]. 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

  1. ^ Azaroff, A., Goñi Urriza, M., Gassie, C., Monperrus, M., & Guyoneaud, R. (2020). Marine mercury-methylating microbial communities from coastal to Capbreton Canyon sediments (North Atlantic Ocean). Environmental Pollution, 262, N.PAG. https://doi-org.ju.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.envpol.2020.114333
  2. ^ McCormack, M., Fielding, R., Kiszka, J., Paz, V., Jackson, B., Bergfelt, D., & Dutton, J. (2020). Mercury and selenium concentrations, and selenium:mercury molar ratios in small cetaceans taken off st. vincent, west indies. Environmental Research, 181. doi:10.1016/j.envres.2019.108908
  3. ^ Cinnirella, S., Bruno, D., Pirrone, N., Horvat, M., Živković, I., Evers, D., . . . Sunderland, E. (2019). Mercury concentrations in biota in the mediterranean sea, a compilation of 40 years of surveys. Scientific Data, 6(1), 1-11. doi:10.1038/s41597-019-0219-y
  4. ^ Titcomb, E., Reif, J., Fair, P., Stavros, H., Mazzoil, M., Bossart, G., & Schaefer, A. (2017). Blood mercury concentrations in common bottlenose dolphins from the indian river lagoon, florida: Patterns of social distribution. Marine Mammal Science, 33(3), 771-784. doi:10.1111/mms.12390
  5. ^ Archer, D. E, & Blum, J. D. (2018). A model of mercury cycling and isotopic fractionation in the ocean. Biogeosciences, 15, 6297–6313. https://doi-org.ju.idm.oclc.org/10.5194/bg-15-6297-2018
  6. ^ Kawai, T., Sakurai, T., & Suzuki, N. (2020). Application of a new dynamic 3-D model to investigate human impacts on the fate of mercury in the global ocean. Environmental Modelling and Software, 124. https://doi-org.ju.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.envsoft.2019.104599
  7. ^ Kim, H., Lee, K., Lim, D.-I., Nam, S.-I., Han, S. hee, Kim, J., Lee, E., Han, I.-S., Jin, Y. K., & Zhang, Y. (2019). Increase in anthropogenic mercury in marginal sea sediments of the Northwest Pacific Ocean. The Science of the Total Environment. https://doi-org.ju.idm.oclc.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2018.11.076

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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.

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

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)[reply]

the Joss paper burning is not a common practice

only a few old guys do that Name8864 (talk) 04:53, 13 October 2023 (UTC) also we need to know how much pollutant is created by this eg monitor one place in 1 activity. Name8864 (talk) 04:54, 13 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]

I've altered the wording to indicate it's a common traditional practice. Some stats can be found in the papers cited, although I don't have time to extract the relevant information at this time. Polyamorph (talk) 05:29, 13 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Joss paper burning is a very common practice. I don’t think “only a few old guys do that” or it’s “one place in 1 activity”.
Per source:
  • How incense and joss paper burning during the worship activities influences ambient mercury concentrations in indoor and outdoor environments of an Asian temple? (2016 Taiwan) - Both indoor and outdoor speciated mercury (GEM, GOM, and PHg) were sampled by manual samplers, while ambient GEM at an indoor site was in-situ monitored by a continuous GEM monitor. Field measurement results showed that the total atmospheric mercury (TAM) concentrations in indoor and outdoor environments were in the range of 8.03–35.72 and 6.03–31.35 ng/m3, respectively. The indoor and outdoor ratios (I/O) of TAM in the daytime and at nighttime were in the range of 0.64–0.90 and 1.50–2.04, respectively. The concentrations of GEM, GOM, and PHg during the holiday periods were approximately 1–4 times higher than those during the non-holiday periods.... This study revealed that the burning of incenses and joss papers during the worship activities in Asia is a neglected mercury emission source, which could highly influence the concentrations of speciated mercury in the indoor and outdoor environments of Asian temples.
  • Large contribution from worship activities to the atmospheric soot particles in northwest China (2022) - Our results show that the burning of joss paper accounted for up to 42% of the atmospheric rBC mass, higher than traffic (14–17%), crop residue (10–17%), coal (18–20%) during the Hanyi festival in northwest China. Moreover, we show that the overall air quality can be worsened due to the practice of uncontrolled burning of joss paper during the festival, which is not just confined to the people who do the burning… the pollution events contributed by joss paper burning may pose an acute exposure risk for public health. This is particularly important since burning joss paper during worship activities is common in China and most Asian countries with similar traditions.
See also:
Plus:
A young lady carrying a large bag of joss paper goods waiting for train at the station
A shop selling joss paper goods in Hong Kong
  • [1] (HK Gov.) - ...we usually designate suitable open spaces in public housing estates and arrange the necessary facilities for incense and joss-paper burning. This is to prevent nuisance caused by tenants performing rituals in unsuitable public areas. Yes now they are not burning in the corridors or staircase access of the building, BUT, now they are burning in the parks / public area between buildings. As of 2016, “the proportion of the population living in public rental housing and subsidised home ownership housing were 29.1% and 15.8% respectively”. And the practice (placing large barrels in open area for people to burn joss paper) isn’t limited to public housing estates. Further, there are at least four festivals in the place that people will burn joss paper. They won’t just burn on the day of the festival. They burn for the whole month. So at least four months in a year people are burning. In other words, at least four months in a year people are suffering from the pollutants of joss paper burning. Further, joss paper nowadays isn’t just “paper”. Some may contain (toxic) metals, ink, etc. “Particle pollution can also travel long distances from its source; for example from wildfires hundreds of miles away”. All I would say is, burning of joss papers during the worship activities in Asia is probably a neglected pollutant emission source.
--Dustfreeworld (talk) 14:17, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Besides festivals, people also burn joss paper every fifteen days (Chinese calendar); and when (after) someone died.
  • Joss_paper#Use - “Every fifteen days business owners . . .burn spirit money in red braziersand set out offering tables on the sidewalk for both gods and ghosts.”
  • [2]
--Dustfreeworld (talk) 16:17, 15 October 2023 (UTC)[reply]
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