If A Coin Has Been Plated With Mercury, Is It A Hazzard To

Quote: would not worry about it. Just don't put the coin in your mouth. The mercury should be dissolved into the coin. How can you tell?

I am going on how it looks. It has a very shinny look. And, someone has tried to copper plate over that, and it has peeled away from the mercury in places.

I just did not want to sell or show it to someone and hurt them. I know the coin has been altered. It is supposed to weigh 3.11 grams and it weight is 3.2 grams.

Are you sure you aren't just looking at a zinc core cent ( ones made during and after 1982 )? These cents only have a pure copper skin on the outside of a pure zinc core. If for whatever reason the copper were peeling away it would expose a shiny silvery core, just as you describe. It is a 1944 D The edges are a mercury color and a little copper color and there are shinny spots on the front and back of the coin. I checked it with a magnet and it is not steel.

On one or two occasions as a kid I 'plated' a couple of copper coins with mercury.

I had no idea of the danger. In fact, I have quite a few mercury amalgam tooth fillings, that have been there for over 40 years. In this situation, the mercury is locked into the fillings as an alloy, (with mercury, the alloy is known as an 'amalgum'), so there is no problem.

There is also no problem with stainless steel cutlery, where the iron is in alloy with the poisonous heavy metals chromium and nickel.

So why is it such a big deal?

Merely handling mercury 'plated' coins does not present much of a risk. But the way I 'plated' them is where the danger lies. I dropped a small bead of mercury on the surface of the coin and rubbed it into the surface of the coin with my bare fingers. In so doing, some of the mercury is forced into skin and then gan get into the bloodstream.

There is NO ONE who is prepared to say that such a practice is not dangerous. For me, I only tried this stupid trick on a couple of small coins only. At least, I can say that I have not poisoned myself enough to suffer the effects of Minimata Disease.

Google:
'minimata disease', and you shall see what I mean. You won't rub mercury on the surface of coins after reading up on that disease.

My mom worked for a dentist when I was a child and she would occassionally bring home mercury from the office (not sure how it was used in the dentist office). I guess over the years (late 50's/early 60's) I rubbed mercury on hundreds of dimes and quarters, they sure did shine. Probably not very smart, but it sure was fun aaaanddd it d I d notttt seeeeme toooo bo ther meeeee atalll.

Whatever kind of mercury, I would not want to touch, even if its on a coin plated or in liquid form.

Metallic mercury is actually fairly safe, it is the organo-mercuric compounds that tend to be very poisonous. And Mercury does not form organic compounds very easily. One of the most common ways of being poisoned by mercury was from breathing the mercury vapors formed from heating a mercury amalgam to drive off the mercury. (Mercury used to be widely used in gold mining because it so rapidly dissolves gold. It would be used to treat the crushed gold ore and it would absorb the gold, then the resulting amalgam would be heated to drive off the mercury leaving the gold and other metals behind. The mercury fumes would then be condensed to recover the mercury for reuse in modern mining or just allowed to escape in 18th and 19th century mining.)

Back in the 1960's and 70's we first started being so worried about lead in paint, everyone was encouraged to use latex based paints instead of lead based ones. But the latex based paint have a problem. Being based on organic compounds and containing water they tend to be a food source for bacteria and fungi. So to solve that problem the paint included organo-mercuric fungicides. Over time these mercury based poisons do tend to outgas out of the paint. So to protect us from lead paint that you would basically have to eat, they exposed us to mercury paint that dumped the toxins into the air we breathe. I don't believe they use mercury in latex paint anymore, but at some point in the future I foresee they same type of EPA regulations for testing and removing mercury latex paint that we have today for lead based paint.