Here's one for health & safety · AditNow Community

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spitfire
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie Topic Starter

16 years ago

A worker shovelling pure arsenic in an arsenic mill!

🔗Personal-Album-1228-Image-34360[linkphoto]Personal-Album-1228-Image-34360[/linkphoto][/link]

spitfire

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ICLOK
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

16 years ago

I could suggest a few for that duty......

Amazing to think this was an accepted practice....

When I was at BR I was gob smacked to find out they new the efects of working with Asbestos in 1908 in the Alkali & C act... amazing it took em 60 more years to really do anthing about it...

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh Creeper!!!!!

sparty_lea
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

16 years ago

This pic of a guy sat on a bath of mercury always intrigued me.
http://www.neatorama.com/tag/mercury/

probably not too healthy either but looks great fun

There are 10 types of people in the world.

Those that understand binary and those that do not!

carnkie
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

16 years ago

I always thought this caption a tad ironic. I mean who would be daft enough to handle Bran?

Locust plagues in Palestine 1930. Methods of fighting the locust plague. Preparing a dope of poison for the locusts. Bran soaked with arsenic.

🔗Personal-Album-272-Image-34362[linkphoto]Personal-Album-272-Image-34362[/linkphoto][/link]

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

Dean Allison
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

16 years ago

"sparty_lea" wrote:
This pic of a guy sat on a bath of mercury always intrigued me.
http://www.neatorama.com/tag/mercury/

probably not too healthy either but looks great fun

That reminds me of a Jean Cocteau film called Orpheus where a guy dives though a mirror. Apparently for the mirror effect they used a huge vat of mercury! Cant be good for you. And they moan about smoking being a health hazard in the workplace! Bring back the old days 🙂

Dolcoathguy
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

16 years ago

As a person who occasionally works with mercury, it is the vapour that gets you - though ingesting it isn't good either.
I believe the main risk with touching the stuff is that if you are not 100% certain you removed it all, it can slowly get absorbed, however touching it has a lower risk (but there is still a health and safety issue) than breathing the vapour. Stick of bowl of mercury out in a warm room and stick a UV light beside it and observe the shadow cast by the vapour and it is obvious that it gives off a lot of vapour.
Do they still use it in gold mining anywhere in the world? I know got banned in most countries, but sometimes you hear of dodgy mining practices in developing countries.

Is it safe to come out of the bunker yet?

Manicminer
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

16 years ago

"Dolcoathguy" wrote:

Do they still use it in gold mining anywhere in the world? I know got banned in most countries, but sometimes you hear of dodgy mining practices in developing countries.

The small scale miner in most of the developing countries use it. Lack of education and proper affordable equipment contributes a great deal.

South America, North Affrica, Mongolia etc

Gold is where you find it

carnkie
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

16 years ago

I don't know about mercury but remember the cyanide disaster at the Baia Mare mine.

http://www.rec.org/REC/Publications/CyanideSpill/ENGCyanide.pdf

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently there.

ICLOK
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

16 years ago

Mercury has my respect since my mother in law bust an old Thermometer in her hand but could not find the Mercury... but that nighr realised her wedding ring was silver coloured... 😮

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh Creeper!!!!!

grahami
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

16 years ago

#10

When I first started teaching science, back in the early 70s, we still demonstrated air pressure by filling a very long tube with mercury, placing your hand over the tube and inverting it in a bath of mercury, then removing your hand......

Grahami

The map is the territory - especially in chain scale.

Minegeo
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

16 years ago

#11

Here is an example of amalgamation in action by an artisanal miner in Colombia.

Picture one shows the mercury being poured off the black sand that contained the gold grains through a seive - the amalgam is stiffer and "lumpy" and gets caught by the seive.

Picture two shows the amalgam being squeezed through muslin to remove any free mercury.

Picture three shows a numbre of amalgam balls containing around 45%-55% gold. These balls weighed in at 28 ozs so say 14 ozs of gold for a days work aint too bad !

[photo]Personal-Album-1490-Image-34439[/photo]

[photo]Personal-Album-1490-Image-34443[/photo]

[photo]Personal-Album-1490-Image-34446[/photo]

JR
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

16 years ago

#12

So do they extract the gold by heating the balls of amalgam (in the open air and away from civilisation obviously) ? 😮

sleep is a caffeine deficiency.

Morlock
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

16 years ago

#13

"jr48" wrote:
So do they extract the gold by heating the balls of amalgam (in the open air and away from civilisation obviously) ? 😮

Saw a program on it a while ago, pump dredging sand from river, process as described but I think they recovered the mercury by distillation.

All bare hands stuff.(was in the middle of nowhere) 😉

Minegeo
50.2% (Neutral)
Newbie

16 years ago

#14

Actually they normally take them to a modern smelter / gold refinery which recovers the mercury in sealed retorts and then sells the mercury back to the miners.

Also produces this:

[photo]Personal-Album-1490-Image-001[/photo]