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

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.