Researchers who studied three generations of mothers and their children from the community of Grassy Narrows, Ontario, have concluded that sustained exposure to the toxic metal helped cause a suicide rate three times higher than any other First Nations community – which are already far higher than among the country’s general population.
That’s weird considering mercury was and is kinda valuable.
Maybe it was mixed in with something else and wasn’t considered valuable enough to salvage/filter out. I also wonder if the 20,000lbs number is over a period of many years. Super messed up either way though, I don’t even know where one would start cleaning this up. :(
Maybe/probably but on the scale of 20000lbs that still seems odd. Although at 113lbs/gal that’s only 175 gallons but still, mercury is usually used in extremely small quantities.
Typically as a vapor, even. And it has a fairly low vapor pressure for a liquid. Not even that much vapor is needed.
It’s an immense amount of liquid mercury - especially since it probably had organic compounds in it too. Bioavailable mercury is truly fucked stuff, and those responsible for this should live the rest of their lives in a chemical shed.
That’s…worse in a lot of ways. Mercury compounds are way way fucking bad and are even more dangerous than “just” straight elemental mercury.
I didn’t think of it like that. Maybe it was mixed up and hard to separate from something else? Or maybe there were high taxes, etc, on commercial waste? Something like that?