Talk:Mercury (element)

"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)
 * 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)

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

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)


 * I agree with the above points. As part of my PhD work, I recently published a review article summarizing the state of knowledge around this topic (Edwards et al., 2021, Fifty years of volcanic mercury emission research: Knowledge gaps and future directions, Science of the Total Environment, volume 757, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scitotenv.2020.143800). One additional issue is the inset figure from USGS showing Hg spikes in Fremont Glacier ice; this is based off of the results of one 2002 study (Schuster et al., 2002, Atmospheric Mercury Deposition during the Last 270 Years: A Glacial Ice Core Record of Natural and Anthropogenic Sources, Environmental Science & Technology, volume 36, pp. 2303–2310, doi.org/10.1021/es0157503) but a more recent and more robust study has disproven these spikes as being linked to volcanic eruptions; they are in fact anthropogenic signals (Chellman et al., 2017, Reassessment of the Upper Fremont Glacier Ice-Core Chronologies by Synchronizing of Ice-Core-Water Isotopes to a Nearby Tree-Ring Chronology, Environmental Science & Technology, volume 51, pp. 4230–4238, https://doi.org/10.1021/acs.est.6b06574). This reinterpretation has been accepted by the scientific community.

Brockaedwards (talk) 02:31, 9 November 2023 (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.



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. — Llywelyn II   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&mdash;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)

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)
 * 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)
 * 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:
 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Joss_paper_burners
 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Joss_paper_furnaces
 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Joss_paper_in_the_Netherlands
 * https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Joss_paper
 * Plus:
 * [[File:A young lady carrying a large bag of joss paper goods waiting for train at the station.jpg|thumb|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 01.jpg
 * (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)
 * Besides festivals, people also burn joss paper every fifteen days (Chinese calendar); and when (after) someone died.
 * Joss_paper - “Every fifteen days business owners . . .burn spirit money in red braziersand set out offering tables on the sidewalk for both gods and ghosts.”
 * 
 * -- Dustfreeworld (talk) 16:17, 15 October 2023 (UTC)
 * Your notion that “Only a few old guys do that” might be right for HK before 1997, but things had probably changed since then. Within the 25 years after 1997, more than one million mainland residents have moved to Hong Kong for family reunions, which constitutes about one-seventh of the city’s population. -- Dustfreeworld (talk) 17:24, 15 October 2023 (UTC)

Greater accuracy?
The section Releases to the Environment claims that mercury thermometers are use scientifically because of their greater accuracy and working range. I doubt this very much, though "they are more accurate" is common belief of students with little understanding of accuracy or thermometric practice. They certainly don't have the range of electronic thermometers, which can be read to a greater precision than a mercury in glass thermometer. Chemical Engineer (talk) 16:01, 19 October 2023 (UTC)

Large amount of content removed
Large amount of content has been removed from the page since 15 Nov. I have restored a little of those with two edits, but there’s likely much more. Eyes please? -- Dustfreeworld (talk) 02:57, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

It looks like someone making the article in the inconsistency.
Hi, I looked around some articles talking about the facts of some chemical elements including Sodium, Potassium, Tungsten and spotted that the heading of the introduction does not follow a normal style of writing. Turnbull has suggested the change to keep it similar and balanced among any others, but I found recently no articles is as unique as this referred. I would hope any editiors willing to remain the original state and follow the Wikipedia's policy about consensus and consistency. Thanks a lot and answer this if you mind and care about. 2405:4802:64C6:ACB0:1DB:2F3:CF1B:D798 (talk) 03:28, 22 November 2023 (UTC)

rehashing etymology
article currently "cites" the etymology from dictionary.com but intentionally uses misleading wording. "hydrargyrum" came from Latin "hydrargyrus," which came from "hydrargyros," which came from "hydr-" and "argyros". "hydr-" NOT "hydor" as currently falsely stated. the former is a STEM of the later. this doesn't seem conceptually impossible to understand. if the etymology were based on "hydor" instead of "hydr-" as claimed, the word would have been "hydorargyrum," which clearly isn't the case. the STEM "hydr-," NOT the WORD "hydor," is in "hydrargyrum.”

as for sourcing, how about using a more legitimate one: https://www.etymonline.com/word/hydrargyrum#etymonline_v_34465

SollyWIKI (talk) SollyWIKI (talk) 04:51, 3 December 2023 (UTC)


 * i should specify, this is all in reference to the intro.SollyWIKI (talk) SollyWIKI (talk) 05:05, 3 December 2023 (UTC)
 * Both dictionary.com and etymonline.com are acceptable sources, according to WikiProject Linguistics. How should the etymology be made more clear in the leading paragraph? If hydr- is the stem derived from hydor, then it's reasonable to state in simple terms that hydrargyrum is derived from the two words hydor and argyros. The full details of the etymology don't need to be included in that opening paragraph - there's a whole section on etymology. Reconrabbit (talk) 17:50, 4 December 2023 (UTC)

Mercury, recognized for its extreme toxicity, is a hazardous element that poses severe threats to the nervous and immune systems, kidneys, and various other vital organs
Hi,

I would like to propose an addition to the introduction that underscores the severe health threats posed by mercury. I suggest including the following sentence to highlight its extreme toxicity and the potential harm it can cause to critical body systems:

"Mercury, known for its extreme toxicity, is a hazardous element that poses significant threats to the nervous system, immune system, kidneys, and other vital organs."

or just this sentence : "Mercury is a particularly toxic element that can damage the nervous system, immune system, kidneys, and other organs."

For further reference and a comprehensive understanding of mercury's impact on health, please consider the following sources:

https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/mercury-and-health https://www.hindawi.com/journals/jeph/2012/460508/ https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1382668905000700

Are you in agreement with this modification?

Have a nice day.

OrionGrey Oriongrey (talk) 03:13, 9 December 2023 (UTC)


 * I made some changes to this effect, though a lot of this information is linked under the toxicity section in Mercury poisoning. It was mainly lacking in the opening paragraphs. Recon rabbit  ( talk | edits ) 22:30, 21 December 2023 (UTC)

Density data
The tabulated density data deviate substantially from those listed in a fairly recent edition of the CRC Handbook. (Similar to the data at .) Please check. —DIV (1.144.104.165 (talk) 05:26, 27 February 2024 (UTC))


 * The density is given at r.t. (presumed 20 C). The value given by the 2004 reference differs only by 3 thousandths from Engineering Toolbox. What change is suggested? Recon  rabbit  16:09, 27 February 2024 (UTC)