19 ms·

Mercury Spill

764 points by luu 11y ago

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
tomlock 11y ago
I wonder how many of these spills go unreported! In high school one of my classmates told me how he used to crack open thermometers and play with the liquid. I don't know if it was mercury or not, but it seemed to be, and he was completely unaware of how toxic it was.
- ubernostrum 11y ago
  My mother told me that when I was very young (too young to remember), I was sick and she stuck a thermometer in my mouth to take my temperature. And I promptly bit the end off it, and had to be rushed to the hospital to have my stomach cleaned out of mercury.
  - jcadam 11y ago
    I did that as a small child. I have a vague recollection of it. Pretty sure I wasn't rushed to the hospital. My mother was mostly upset I ruined the thermometer.
  - leni536 11y ago
    >in my mouth Was that common in the US for mercury thermometers? In Hungary it was always "under the armpit" but as far as I remember I have seen the thermometer in mouth method in US cartoons.
    - deleted 11y ago
      [deleted]
    - ghaff 11y ago
      Yes. I always had my temperature taken orally. (Although I don't use mercury thermometers these days.)
function_seven 11y ago
Yikes. I'm glad my house was built in the 80's. No asbestos, no lead in the paint, no mercury hiding out in my ceiling. How dangerous was this contamination, though? I know mercury evaporates, and that it is an air quality concern, but given its location and assuming normal levels of indoor air movement, is it worth $50k to abate it? I tend to be skeptical of mold issues, for example, but I also imagine that mercury is way more harmful than mold spores, mostly because you can't smell mercury.
- detaro 11y ago
  The article says: There were still areas in that room that were .037 milligrams per cubic meter. Wikipedia gives the following info: Chronic exposure by inhalation, even at low concentrations in the range 0.7–42 μg/m3, has been shown in case control studies to cause effects such as tremors, impaired cognitive skills, and sleep disturbance in workers. Even if the first number is as high as it is because they handled it, things like that they found it while sweeping the kitchen suggests that not all of it was sitting quietly somewhere, but was possibly disturbed regularly or even ingested. Given that mercury stays in the body for decades and is especially bad for children, that doesn't seem like something one should risk. (+ of course once the building is condemned, you can't really say "yeah, ok, no, we'll risk it")
  - steckerbrett 11y ago
    I would definitely be very uncomfortable with my health had I been living there, balls of mercury in the bathroom seem to suggest that there was quite a high degree of exposure.
- steven2012 11y ago
  Unless your house was built in the very late 80s, there's still a possibility that asbestos could still have been used in your house. Mercury is far more toxic than mold, unless you have asthma or an allergy to mold. I've known people that have lived in mold infested houses with no side effects, so it's not instant death like the lawyers would like to make you think.
- 11y ago
baudehlo 11y ago
This does seem like a good case for small claims court against Honeywell. It's probably limited in what they could recover but they could at least get some of that back.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- toufka 11y ago
  DuPont just lost a significant case regarding Teflon [1]. These companies, decades later are being sought for significant damages. [1] https://theintercept.com/2015/10/08/dupont-found-liable-in-c8-trial/ https://theintercept.com/2015/10/08/dupont-found-liable-in-c...
- duaneb 11y ago
  Why small claims court? Surely the payout for such a huge health risk would be significantly higher than small claims court could provide.
paulsutter 11y ago
Maybe the lesson is to save. There's a huge number of very unlikely risks. Too many risks to carefully avoid them all. Something unexpected will happen. Insurance can help, but as the articls shows, not always.
- ccvannorman 11y ago
  This after a study reveals more than half of Americans have less than $1k in savings. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that in extreme cases, most people would simply go bankrupt or starve. Something to think about when you root for certain laws and politicians..
  - kornish 11y ago
    Just to play devils' advocate, that's less than $1k _in a savings account_. Many people store cash straight in their checking accounts or have much more than $1k in stocks and bonds which aren't too hard at all to liquidate, and the figure you're quoting didn't account for that.
    - nemo44x 11y ago
      You're parsing wrong here. It means people don't have that much liquid. As in saved.
      - kornish 11y ago
        Sure, that's what I said. :)
  - esaym 11y ago
    How is that correct? Almost 70% of americans own their own house. Are you telling me that one can get a mortgage and make a down payment for a new house with only $1k in savings?
- nathanb 11y ago
  Seriously. I don't know a lot of people for whom a surprise $50k bill would be "unfortunately" rather than "disastrously".
PhasmaFelis 11y ago
> Call it $50k total? Jesus fucking Christ. So I guess the lesson here for the average homeowner is "if you find a mercury spill, don't tell anyone or you'll lose your home"? Also: >They were using a Jerome meter, which can only measure down to 3000 ng/m3 when the safe indoor limit is 300 ng/m3 Huh? Why would a mercury-abatement crew use a mercury detection meter that can't actually detect hazardous levels of mercury?
- ubercore 11y ago
  My understanding was they weren't specifically a mercury-abatement crew, so they probably had detectors for a broad range of contaminants, but not specialized equipment for particular toxins. At least that's how I read it.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
- mindslight 11y ago
  > "if you find a mercury spill, don't tell anyone or you'll lose your home" Welcome to the Massachusetts DEP!
- maxerickson 11y ago
  Later he mentions the whole house pressure test, perhaps the crew is using the meter to search for the contaminated areas.
- cbr 11y ago
  They were initially using a Jerome meter to find the areas that needed cleanup, and then used the more sensitive but more expensive Lumex meter to finish the job. The first few days were with a less experienced crew (from the same company) but they were pretty clearly wrong to declare the house cleared without being able to measure below 3000 ng/m3.
- FussyZeus 11y ago
  Exactly what I was thinking, I'd consider myself pretty financially solid but $50k would ruin me. I'm assuming the OP was doing renovations of some kind already and had the cash on hand, or at least the majority of it.
fragsworth 11y ago
I had a physics class in a community college that had us handling open containers of mercury for our experiments. It was maybe 15 years ago. Someone in one of the classes managed to knock one of the jars over, and mercury spilled everywhere on the floor. Either the students hid their spill from the staff, or the staff just had some janitors do a simple sweeping of it, because I noticed spheres of mercury everywhere in that classroom throughout the semester. I didn't realize that mercury spills are such a huge issue until recently. The professor also seemed to be going crazy, which suggests to me that this happened more than once in the past and he was suffering from the effects of mercury poisoning.
- cjbprime 11y ago
  > I didn't realize that mercury spills are such a huge issue until recently. As the post mentions, the world at large didn't realize that vapors from mercury spills are toxic until recently.
  - newjersey 11y ago
    Um, someone (not saying I) may or may not have played with mercury from a broken thermometer as a child. Is that person (not necessarily I) a walking health hazard? How does this work?
    - piyushpr134 11y ago
      I think this mercury scare is overrated. I have played with thermometer mercury many times as a child. I used to break thermometer to get the mercury out and play with it as it was very interesting liquid! Am still well and alive after 20-25 years.
      - Cthulhu_ 11y ago
        Alive? Yes. Sane? Arguable, :p
    - cjbprime 11y ago
ccvannorman 11y ago
It may have cost you $50,000 but you now have +50 karma on HN and rising. Some would say a bargain! ;-] In all seriousness, cool story, glad you're okay, and this makes me think "insurance" as a business needs to be re-thought entirely. How many times has it happened that insurance companies weasel out of paying? Objectively you might think THAT was their primary job.
- deegles 11y ago
  Wouldn't an insurance company that was TOO good at paying out go out of business? :)
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
- Empact 11y ago
  Yep, an alternative model enabled by technology is mutual / cooperative insurance in which the policyholders not only own the company but also govern the release of funds. This way incentives are aligned - the insured want the insurance to act fairly, even with respect to others, so that it will be there for them. It would be something like gofundme but on a subscription basis, with up or down decision-making by subscribers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_insurance
  - JoshTriplett 11y ago
    Vanguard would be a good model to look towards.
  - chimeracoder 11y ago
    > Yep, an alternative model enabled by technology is mutual / cooperative insurance in which the policyholders not only own the company but also govern the release of funds. This way incentives are aligned - the insured want the insurance to act fairly, even with respect to others That doesn't really align incentives, though. There's really no benefit to each individual to approving another person's claim (all it means is less money in the pot). Claims are rare enough that it's not enough to simply say 'if you vote this way for someone else, we'll apply the policy consistently for you', since the expected number of claims that a person is likely to file over the course of their plan is close to zero. (And even if it weren't, the whole issue is that insurance has relatively well-written rules for clear-cut cases, but the complaints people have - like this one - are generally about the interpretation of those policies for special cases, since policies can't possibly enumerate every possible outcome.)
hugium 11y ago
You have saved your children a few IQ points.
DanBlake 11y ago
wow. I remember as a kid ~20 years ago playing with mercury (my grandfather was a dentist and had a 1lb bottle of the stuff for some reason) I think if I found mercury in my house I would literally just scoop it up and bring it to the fire department without thinking about any health hazards of it. Is mercury truely that bad that short exposure is that dangerous? I mean, I wouldnt eat the stuff (or breath it in for extended periods) but I used to roll it around in my hands and whatnot as a kid without any effects. Considering how some people work with mercury ( see this : http://www.vice.com/video/el-dorado http://www.vice.com/video/el-dorado ) , I feel like you need quite a bit of exposure to be up shits creek. Then again, I'm not a doctor so dont listen to me.
- mjmj 11y ago
  Same! I was 7 (25 years ago) and my dad came home with it one day from his work in a vial and I remember him putting it in my hand and letting it roll around for a few seconds. Not sure what consequences I paid for that moment in time.
- Terr_ 11y ago
  IIRC one time touching cold liquid elemental mercury isn't that bad, the short-term problem is breathing mercury fumes or encountering various compounds that it can react to form. Any sort of persistent chronic exposure is definitely bad, of course, since like most "heavy metals" it accumulates and has long-term effects.
  - emddudley 11y ago
    If you haven't seen mercury vapors under an ultraviolet light, it's quite dramatic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JABbofwD3MI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JABbofwD3MI
    - spyder 11y ago
      It looks like same happens with dental amalgam fillings too (which also contains mercury): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw94F94FZqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw94F94FZqA Most say it's safe (the FDA too) and that video just shows water vapor because mercury vapor wouldn't rise like that due to it's weight, but I'm not sure what to believe. http://quackfiles.blogspot.hu/2005/04/smoking-teeth-truth-gets-smoked-out.html http://quackfiles.blogspot.hu/2005/04/smoking-teeth-truth-ge... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy
steven777400 11y ago
I wonder how this kind of thing plays out for people that don't have anywhere near $50k available. I'm assuming since the company worked first and then invoiced, that the options would be either (1) sell the house and use the proceeds (assuming equity exists) to pay off the cleaning, or (2) declare bankruptcy. If the company were to require pre-payment for cleaning, then it's really just down to either (1) abandon and have the bank seize the house, or (2) sell the house for pennies on the dollar to an investor. Things like this (well, not this exotic, but like a busted sewer line which could cost $20k to replace) used to keep me up at night after we "bought" a house. I've found I can rest by mentally reframing the mortgage as rent and knowing that an "out" (strategic default) is always there if something goes very expensively wrong.
- thaumaturgy 11y ago
  You're forgetting (3): get the shopvac, vacuum it all up, and then dump it in the back yard. And yes, I know people that would do exactly that.
  - cjbprime 11y ago
    Unfortunately in this case they ended up having to demolish a floor and ceiling to find all the mercury that had soaked through the floor; a shopvac won't do that.
    - cbr 11y ago
      A shopvac (or any vacuum not designed for mercury) would be a really bad idea: they vaporize the mercury and seriously distribute it around the house.
      - thaumaturgy 11y ago
        I agree with you both, but that doesn't change that I suspect this would be the default approach for a lot of people that have neither the money nor the ideology to justify a professional cleanup. An easy example of this kind of thinking is that people used to (and many still do) bury used motor oil in their yard. (See e.g. http://www.experienceproject.com/question-answer/How-Can-I-Dump-Used-Motor-Oil-In-My-Yard-Without-It-Killing-My-Grass/2144279 http://www.experienceproject.com/question-answer/How-Can-I-D...)
mindslight 11y ago
For $50k I'd at least get some further legal opinions. I believe there's also state laws about what the specific HOx policies can actually exclude (regardless of what the actual policy says), so perhaps there's something there. Although the causality is a latent condition from when you bought the house, which doesn't bode well. If you yourself had caused the spill when doing demo, I think you'd be in a stronger position.
jpatokal 11y ago
So people would use a mercury seal to put pressure on the water, allowing the system to run hotter without boiling. I didn't quite follow this part. Where in the system does the mercury go, how does it add pressure, and does it have anything to do with Wikipedia's description of using mercury in glass-to-metal seals? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-to-metal_seal#Mercury_seal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-to-metal_seal#Mercury_se...
- maxerickson 11y ago
  It's a pressure valve. Here's the patent: https://heatinghelp.com/assets/documents/141.pdf https://heatinghelp.com/assets/documents/141.pdf I don't think I've a clear enough understanding of how it works to try to explain it.
  - steckerbrett 11y ago
    It's essentially a pressure regulator I think.
- steckerbrett 11y ago
  Here's an EPA document which shows some pictures, look at page 2 for the unit the OP has. http://www.epa.gov/mercury/pdfs/EPA-905-F-11-008.pdf http://www.epa.gov/mercury/pdfs/EPA-905-F-11-008.pdf
- fsavard2 11y ago
  This page describes that system, I think: http://www.oldhouseweb.com/how-to-advice/gravity-hot-water-heating-continued.shtml http://www.oldhouseweb.com/how-to-advice/gravity-hot-water-h... (the "Honeywell Heat Generator")
  - cbr 11y ago
    I've now linked that from the article; thanks! (I read that page when I was first reading about this the night of the spill, but had forgotten about it. Holohan is amazingly knowledgeable about old heating systems.)
nrjames 11y ago
This sounds so familiar... Here's a story about my 1961 house that is built on concrete slabs. About 18 months ago, we noticed a bit of the hardwood floor was bubbling up. We ignored it. About 6 months ago, our water pressure started to drop and then disappeared altogether. The plumber came and told us that our well pump (which was relatively new) wasn't working. They pulled the pump and the PVC bushing around it was cracked, so it had been running nonstop trying to keep pressure up. Plumbers fixed the crack, put the pump back in, it still wasn't working... They pulled it again and replaced it. I mentioned to the plumber that the floor was bubbling up and he told me that what likely happened is that the supply line was leaking under the slab (where they put them in the 1960s), probably causing the floor to bubble and the well pump to turn on and off frequently, increasing torque on the bushing, which caused it to crack and subsequently burn out the motor. He referred me to a contracting group that could help with the problem under the slab. Fast forward to June of this year. Contractors begin to pull up the wooden floor, only to find there's asbestos-laden linoleum under it. An asbestos remediation firm came and removed the entire wooden floor and the asbestos. (Note: the wooden floor was parquet, of a formerly-standard size that no longer is made, meaning to replace it and match the rest of the house, we would have to find somebody to cut each tiny little board.) Early July, contractors jackhammer into the slab and cannot find a leak. While investigating, we discover that the septic tank is full and backed up, likely from some landscapers running over the septic field with a bobcat about 3 yrs ago. It had been slowly draining and we had it serviced 18 months ago, but it was again full and plumbers began to speculate that sewage was standing in the lines under the house and that an old septic line was leaking -- not the supply line. Nobody can figure out what to do because the original plans to the house are missing, the plans to an addition are missing, and nobody knows where the supply lines or septic really run, in spite of the fact they had snaked cameras through them 4 times. Meanwhile, we have a huge hole with ragged pieces of rebar and concrete everywhere in our family room. My 2 and 4 yr old daughters learn to walk around it carefully because it's impossible to get to the kitchen without walking through the family room. Plumbers come back 4 weeks later with a plan to replace the supply lines and the septic lines. We have to take a break to get insurance approval and take out a HELOC to cover costs that insurance won't cover. This takes a while. Ten weeks after the first hole in the slab, they start digging to replace the septic/supply lines and they mistakenly break into the air ducts running under the slab (the fancy new thing to do in 1961). Surprise: the air ducts are made of a fibrous material that sort of looks like cardboard but might contain asbestos. Today, the asbestos remediation people came and took a sample. The HVAC repair people (took 4 companies to find somebody to attempt to repair the 'cardboard' ducts) put a camera in them and found that the vibrations from the jackhammer used to cut the slab (likely) had caused many other collapses in the air ducts in the same room. The only saving grace here is that it appears that the 'cardboard' ducts only were used in that room and that they are metal in the rest of the house (please please please). Now, the demolition team has to come back and remove most of the rest of the slab in that room and in the kitchen in order to replace the 'cardboard' ducts that are collapsed; all prior to doing final repairs on the supply and septic lines running under the slab. When that's done, we'll have to repair the slab, get new floors, new kitchen countertops, and hope that we can move back in. We've been in a hotel with our two daughters on-and-off for the past 3 months. I really hope we're in the house by Christmas. Please be very careful if you purchase an old house. Here are some pictures: http://imgur.com/a/JxiKl http://imgur.com/a/JxiKl FYI, ours is an old Westinghouse Total Electric Model Home (pdf): http://www.ncmodernist.org/westinghousehousebroch.pdf http://www.ncmodernist.org/westinghousehousebroch.pdf p.s. That was way more than I intended to write here. p.p.s. Total bill, to date is > $50k. Insurance is covering 95% of it. Amica is wonderful.
cbr 11y ago
Author here: happy to answer questions.
- FrankenPC 11y ago
  How long have you owned the house? Toxic waste like that are grounds to sue the previous owner if not disclosed during the purchase...at least in California.
  - cbr 11y ago
    We bought the house in February. We might try to sue people, but it's pretty clear the previous owners don't have much money. (The house was mortgaged to within a few-k of the selling price, and they had stopped paying their monthly payments. Which made it pretty hard to actually buy the house! http://www.jefftk.com/p/house-buying-timeline http://www.jefftk.com/p/house-buying-timeline)
    - FrankenPC 11y ago
      So sorry you had to go through this. It's a legit homeowners nightmare. What could be worse? Some kind of crazy crawlspace mold outbreak?
  - rtkwe 11y ago
    > I talked to a lawyer, who didn't think we'd be likely to succeed if we tried to get the insurance company to pay anyway. They did think whoever owned the house at the time of the spill would be liable, but it would be hard to prove that the spill happened at a certain time and they may not have the money. Right from the article. Sounds like there have been multiple owners, no way to assign blame. Last owner probably can't be fined for something they had no knowledge of.
    - Gibbon1 11y ago
      I'm not sure, but maybe this is something title insurance is supposed to cover?
grecy 11y ago
A friend of mine has a "mercury blob maze" [1] where you have a little blob of mercury trapped in a plastic container and you have to get it through the maze - it was fun to use at different temperatures, as the blob would want to break apart when hot, or not move at all when cold. Shaking it turns it into 300 blobs. Upon seeing it, my science teacher dad had some cool stories about playing with Mercury 20-30 years ago in high school classes. They used to take it out and handle it, no big deal :) [1] Like these https://www.google.com/search?q=mercury+blob+maze&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X https://www.google.com/search?q=mercury+blob+maze&source=lnm...
- imglorp 11y ago
  Yup, we did that. Also, they gave us some freon in a baggie to play with phase change, and we used carbon tetrachloride and benzine in our o-chem class like it was nothing. That stuff's all off limits these days I guess, along with "real" chemistry sets for kids.
- dynomight 11y ago
  I used to play with those (mercury blob mazes) at electronic/junk shops when I was a little kid. Currently I've got a small collecting of mercury switches and rather large jar of mercury in the basement... It's neat stuff.
- jandrese 11y ago
  Elemental Mercury isn't especially dangerous though. People freak out over the word "Mercury" but forms like that aren't bioavailable for the most part and are reasonably safe. I wouldn't go breathing the fumes for extended periods of time, but holding a pool in your hand in science class isn't going to kill you. That's why it's a bit frustrating to read stories like this where the cleanup crew goes overboard and racks up tens of thousands of dollars worth of bills for a simple spill.
  - cbr 11y ago
    Breathing the fumes for an extended period of time? That's exactly what we would have had without the remediation.
gwern 11y ago
What's really crazy is that apparently some people have the idea that mercury is an 'investment' and will voluntarily keep jugs of it in their home: http://www.ert.org/products/mercury_response_guide/AttachmentA.pdf http://www.ert.org/products/mercury_response_guide/Attachmen...
- johnloeber 11y ago
  That document turned out to be a very interesting, thorough read. I think it's more crazy that mercury is apparently still used in ritualistic/spiritual contexts.
- kragen 11y ago
  That document says, "People often keep jars of mercury in their homes because they think that mercury is worth money, like liquid silver. In reality, mercury is nearly worthless, but the cleanup cost after a large spill easily can exceed the cost of a home." http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/mercury/mcs-2015-mercu.pdf http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/mercury/mcs... gives the price of mercury as US$1850 per 76-pound flask, up from US$1076 in 2010. That's US$54/kg, or US$730 per liter at 13.5 g/cc (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28element%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28element%29). Silver is currently http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver.html http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver.html US$15.76 per troy ounce, which is US$506.70/kg or US$5315 per liter at 10.49 g/cc (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver). Silver also has the advantage that it won't make you sick if you spill it. As a point of comparison, copper is sufficiently expensive that people steal copper pipes and wires from unoccupied houses. Copper costs US$2.41/lb. (US$5.31/kg), less than 1% of the cost of mercury. The junk man in the slum where I'm going this afternoon will pay you AR$35/kg for it, which is US$2.23/kg, which is enough to incentivize the cartoneros to break the yokes off any CRT discarded on the street within hours. (He doesn't list a price for mercury on his sign.) So "nearly worthless" seems like an exaggeration — mercury is worth more per liter than any other commodity substance you're likely to have in your house other than silver and Freon-22 — but it also doesn't seem like a really smart investment, especially if you have kids.
31reasons 11y ago
As a kid I often played with mercury used in a blood pressure monitor. Spilling it on the table and mesmerized by its look and feel. I am not sure what damages that might have caused to my brain now that I know its toxic!
- tirant 11y ago
  I did the same. I broke an old thermometer just to play with the mercury. I used to keep it in a small metal box. Some years later I went to check it, and I had all disappeared from the metal box!!
mirimir 11y ago
That's arguably overkill for domestic contamination by elemental and inorganic mercury. Even that family in that contaminated house was probably at far greater risk from methylmercury[0] in predatory fish. So cutting predatory fish from the diet would have arguably been more cost effective. But it's hard to say. CDC[1] is more nuanced on the topic than EPA[2]. And I do tend to trust CDC. [0] http://toxics.usgs.gov/definitions/methylmercury.html http://toxics.usgs.gov/definitions/methylmercury.html [1] http://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/pdf/Mercury_FactSheet.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/pdf/Mercury_FactSheet.pdf [2] http://www3.epa.gov/airtoxics/hlthef/mercury.html http://www3.epa.gov/airtoxics/hlthef/mercury.html
- brianpan 11y ago
  They have a 1.5 year-old that undoubtably puts everything in his/her mouth. Even the CDC factsheet says the impact of low levels of exposure is unknown. And we're not talking about the milligrams in a CFL bulb, a speck of mercury. This was cups of mercury.
  - venomsnake 11y ago
    You can drink mercury and nothing bad will happen. It is the vapors that hurt you. A lot. A toddler breathing mercury vapors is bad idea. Of course bucket of sulfur will go a long way towards cleaning this up.
    - keithpeter 11y ago
      I was thinking 'drop yellow sulfur over the floor' as I read the first paragraph and when the fire officers arrived. As I read the rest of the article and found the section that describes the source and progress of the spill, I realised that a more radical cleanup would be needed. I'm in my late 50s and we used to use mercury liberally at school and after. I'm talking half a gallon of the stuff to demostrate the Toricelli vacuum, and later at University for floating bearings. Always dirty on surface, so low vapour. Bucket of sulfur in the lab. I'm not recommending a return to those days (benzene, carbon-tet, acetone on tap &c).
  - 11y ago
ghshephard 11y ago
I once had a ceiling leak of water from my upstairs neighbor. I called a contractor, and he broke open a segment of the ceiling where my vent was - and the entire gap between my unit and upstairs looked like something from Venus - terrifying colors/growths taking place. The contractor said that there was a massive mold infusion, and that we would need a hazardous material team to come clean it up, and we were looking at a bill of around $20,000 - $30,000 for the team to come do the full cleanup of the riser. I freaked out a little, and thankfully had a calm property management company that just said, "Look the area above bathrooms always looks like this, and we just need to have the people upstairs caulk a bit better around their bathtub, and we'll be fine. I'm not going to claim I have any idea whether calling the HazMat/FireDepartment team makes sense here (Hell, Mercury is dangerous) - but it's always a good idea to see if there are safe alternatives that might save you several tens of thousands of dollars.
- dhbanes 11y ago
  Wait, so the property management company (which would be responsible for facilitating the mold remediation at the very least, or paying for it if they own the property or were liable for the issue in the first place) told you that mold was no big deal and your upstairs neighbors just need to caulk a little more around their bath tub (also the responsibility of the property owner) and that calmed you down? Mold and fungi can certainly be harmful to humans. The interests of your landlords and property managers are not aligned with yours in this case.
  - jessaustin 11y ago
    From the context it seems likely that GP owns a condo, so bills like that would not be sent to property management. Also if anyone has an interest to lie it is mold remediation contractors whose entire business is built on exaggeration.
    - ghshephard 11y ago
      Exactly correct. It was my Condo, and if it was an exterior wall, then the Home Owners Association would be charged a "Special Fee" (We had recently dropped $100+K on repairing wall damage from a rain leak) - but ceiling damage would have been on me. To make matters worse, they were renters living in the upstairs unit, and when I contacted the owner, it turned out he was a lawyer, and initially all he said was, "If you have a problem, sue me." Thankfully, the manager of our property management board was much more sane, had seen the space above bathroom vents, knew that it always looked funky (lots of moisture going up through those vents), and saved me $30K. I guess my point was - given a choice, a subcontractor can always turn a minor clean up into a $50K project, but it's entirely possible, there is a $5K choice as well that the home owner might want to consider pursuing.
gcb0 11y ago
> there was a dusy little puddle what's a dusy?
- gruez 11y ago
  reworded: there was a [little puddle that was dusty]
  - gcb0 11y ago
    was that a slang/neologism/typo? honestly curious. english third language and all...
    - davidcollantes 11y ago
      I assume it a typo.
- cbr 11y ago
  Sorry, typo for "dusty". Fixed.
ksec 11y ago
Is there anything else in the modern world where we still uses mercury in this large amount of quantity? If so why?
- yongjik 11y ago
  Well, there's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Zenith_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Zenith_Telescope (I'm not sure how much Mercury the telescope uses.)
- mirimir 11y ago
  The standard low-tech approach for gold mining: 1) mix crushed ore with mercury; 2) let sit for a while; 3) boil off mercury over a fire; 4) sell gold. Maybe you try to condense some of the mercury. But mercury is cheap compared to gold, so why bother? Also, we burn lots of coal. And coal contains mercury. Anyway see this cool EPA page: http://www2.epa.gov/international-cooperation/mercury-emissions-global-context http://www2.epa.gov/international-cooperation/mercury-emissi...
- carlob 11y ago
  There is a mercury fountain in Barcelona http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/calder-mercury-fountain http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/calder-mercury-fountain
- wycx 11y ago
  There would be a few 10s of mililitres in a mercury diff pump. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_pump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_pump
Too 11y ago
In the end he is using the $50k expense as an argument for renting instead of buying. I am wondering, if you were to rent, would your landlord actually cover this? Sounds like that would be equally hard as claiming it on insurance or previous owner of house. I can imagine the response being something along "our janitor was qualified to clean it up and you shouldn't have called haz team" or simply that the leak wasn't their fault. On the other hand you can easily bail out and just rent another place, unless the queue to get a rental is 3years+ in your city.
- mirimir 11y ago
  No, you just move. Not your problem. And I doubt that the lease would stand in court.
sirseal 11y ago
Wow. That's crazy expensive. I'm glad to hear about this story. I don't think I'd pay $50k for something like this.
c1sc0 11y ago
This makes me feel bad for breaking a thermometer as a little boy just to play with the mercury inside.
davidcollantes 11y ago
When I was a child, me and my nephews (which are about my own age) used to go to the pharmacy to buy thermometers, and break them for their mercury. With time we accumulated enough to fill up a mid-sized crystal jar, I would say around 200 grams. We played with that mercury a lot. We passed it between our hands, which later held treats we ate. We laid down on the grown, and pour it in our closed eyes, letting it drop on the side of our faces. The only thing we came short of doing was putting mercury in our mouth. No harm ever came to us as a result. I would have cleaned the spill for free, if I get to keep the mercury. ;-)
- cbr 11y ago
  No harm ever came to us as a result. I think you're probably right, but how do you know? It's very hard to compare yourself to a version of you who didn't have that kind of exposure as a kid.
  - davidcollantes 11y ago
    True. What I meant to say was, I was not poisoned, nor felt sick, and so far I am into my 50s. I know there might still be time to pay for what I did as a child...
unicornporn 11y ago
Does anyone get near aroused by this kind of web design? I love it and wish every site could be "dumbed down" to this kind of easy navigation and reading experience. I know there are "reader views" in many modern browser, but I'd also like the site structure and navigation to be easier to overview. Sort of a WAP view for the twenty-tens.
- cbr 11y ago
  Thanks! I'm glad you like the design. It's a slow evolution of doing the minimum necessary to keep raw html readable as things change. It started out as completely unstyled, then gained a max-width as screens got wider, and eventually a little bit of media-querying to make things look better on phones, but it's still really basic.
  - unicornporn 11y ago
    > It's a slow evolution of doing the minimum necessary to keep raw html readable as things change I like it and I've been experimenting with exactly the same thing. However, it's kind of hard for me to not get carried away and start adding a superfluous line CSS here and there. :-) How do you pull in the comments from multiple sources BTW? Is it a manual process?
    - cbr 11y ago
      I pull the comments in with: https://github.com/jeffkaufman/webscripts/blob/master/comment_requester_wsgi.py https://github.com/jeffkaufman/webscripts/blob/master/commen... (Which isn't completely up to date; I have some changes I need to push public like hn-support.)
spacecowboy_lon 11y ago
Do American house buyers not have a survey done. In the UK its a requirement of a Mortgage application.
- cbr 11y ago
  We did have a home inspection, but the only way to find this would have been to rip up the floor or bring in a mercury vapor analyzer, neither of which are customary (in the US or UK).
shawnee_ 11y ago
Disagree with his last point here: (One thing this illustrates is that the downside risk of owning is much higher than with renting.) Financial risk, yes; health risk, no. Only a homeowner who owns and lives in the dwelling would care enough to follow the proper procedure for cleaning up a hazardous materials spill such as this. Landlords who invest in buildings (old, decrepit buildings) for the renters' income have almost zero incentive to handle a situation like this correctly.
- crzwdjk 11y ago
  In this case, I believe OP is actually a landlord, who invested in this old decrepit building for rental income. But what do you know, he has plenty of incentive to handle this situation as thoroughly as possible, because he lives there too! Moral of the story: "homeowner" and "landlord" are not mutually exclusive.
SQL2219 11y ago
Effects of Mercury on Brain Neuron Degeneration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipi3OneIw0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipi3OneIw0A
kragen 11y ago
Does US$38k to clean up a few cups of mercury seem ridiculous to anybody else? That would be a very dangerous quantity of mercury if it were in a form like dimethylmercury, but it was metallic mercury. Wouldn't it make more sense to dump some powdered metal into it to amalgamate it, sweep it up and put it in a bag, and open the windows to let the house air out for a day or two?
- jobu 11y ago
  This was my thought as well - I've heard metallic mercury is relatively safe. However, a little bit of googling turned up this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#Elemental_mercury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#Elemental_me... The issue with metallic mercury is the vapors are easily absorbed through the lungs, and not easily filtered (requires an activated carbon filter).
  - kragen 11y ago
    It is indeed relatively safe, in the sense that it takes thousands of times as much metallic mercury to kill you as it would take dimethylmercury. But vapors from metallic mercury have been known to cause acute poisoning for centuries; that article mentions a well-known case from 1810.
- jonknee 11y ago
  The whole story seems ridiculous. When I read about calling the fire department I knew it was going to be a long ride of bureaucratic insanity. My dad used to play with mercury as a kid and apparently that was common. I think he would have swept it up and saved $38k.
  - JshWright 11y ago
    Knowing what you now know about mercury toxicity, would you have done that? Would you have done that with your young child in the house?
    - 11y ago

764 points by luu 11y ago

deleted 11y ago

[deleted]

I wonder how many of these spills go unreported! In high school one of my classmates told me how he used to crack open thermometers and play with the liquid. I don't know if it was mercury or not, but it seemed to be, and he was completely unaware of how toxic it was.

ubernostrum 11y ago
My mother told me that when I was very young (too young to remember), I was sick and she stuck a thermometer in my mouth to take my temperature. And I promptly bit the end off it, and had to be rushed to the hospital to have my stomach cleaned out of mercury.
- jcadam 11y ago
  I did that as a small child. I have a vague recollection of it. Pretty sure I wasn't rushed to the hospital. My mother was mostly upset I ruined the thermometer.
- leni536 11y ago
  >in my mouth Was that common in the US for mercury thermometers? In Hungary it was always "under the armpit" but as far as I remember I have seen the thermometer in mouth method in US cartoons.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Yes. I always had my temperature taken orally. (Although I don't use mercury thermometers these days.)

function_seven 11y ago

Yikes. I'm glad my house was built in the 80's. No asbestos, no lead in the paint, no mercury hiding out in my ceiling. How dangerous was this contamination, though? I know mercury evaporates, and that it is an air quality concern, but given its location and assuming normal levels of indoor air movement, is it worth $50k to abate it? I tend to be skeptical of mold issues, for example, but I also imagine that mercury is way more harmful than mold spores, mostly because you can't smell mercury.

detaro 11y ago
The article says: There were still areas in that room that were .037 milligrams per cubic meter. Wikipedia gives the following info: Chronic exposure by inhalation, even at low concentrations in the range 0.7–42 μg/m3, has been shown in case control studies to cause effects such as tremors, impaired cognitive skills, and sleep disturbance in workers. Even if the first number is as high as it is because they handled it, things like that they found it while sweeping the kitchen suggests that not all of it was sitting quietly somewhere, but was possibly disturbed regularly or even ingested. Given that mercury stays in the body for decades and is especially bad for children, that doesn't seem like something one should risk. (+ of course once the building is condemned, you can't really say "yeah, ok, no, we'll risk it")
- steckerbrett 11y ago
  I would definitely be very uncomfortable with my health had I been living there, balls of mercury in the bathroom seem to suggest that there was quite a high degree of exposure.
steven2012 11y ago
Unless your house was built in the very late 80s, there's still a possibility that asbestos could still have been used in your house. Mercury is far more toxic than mold, unless you have asthma or an allergy to mold. I've known people that have lived in mold infested houses with no side effects, so it's not instant death like the lawyers would like to make you think.
11y ago

baudehlo 11y ago

This does seem like a good case for small claims court against Honeywell. It's probably limited in what they could recover but they could at least get some of that back.

deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
toufka 11y ago
DuPont just lost a significant case regarding Teflon [1]. These companies, decades later are being sought for significant damages. [1] https://theintercept.com/2015/10/08/dupont-found-liable-in-c8-trial/ https://theintercept.com/2015/10/08/dupont-found-liable-in-c...
duaneb 11y ago
Why small claims court? Surely the payout for such a huge health risk would be significantly higher than small claims court could provide.

paulsutter 11y ago

Maybe the lesson is to save. There's a huge number of very unlikely risks. Too many risks to carefully avoid them all. Something unexpected will happen. Insurance can help, but as the articls shows, not always.

ccvannorman 11y ago
This after a study reveals more than half of Americans have less than $1k in savings. I'm not saying you're wrong, I'm saying that in extreme cases, most people would simply go bankrupt or starve. Something to think about when you root for certain laws and politicians..
- kornish 11y ago
  Just to play devils' advocate, that's less than $1k _in a savings account_. Many people store cash straight in their checking accounts or have much more than $1k in stocks and bonds which aren't too hard at all to liquidate, and the figure you're quoting didn't account for that.
  - nemo44x 11y ago
    You're parsing wrong here. It means people don't have that much liquid. As in saved.
    - kornish 11y ago
      Sure, that's what I said. :)
- esaym 11y ago
  How is that correct? Almost 70% of americans own their own house. Are you telling me that one can get a mortgage and make a down payment for a new house with only $1k in savings?
nathanb 11y ago
Seriously. I don't know a lot of people for whom a surprise $50k bill would be "unfortunately" rather than "disastrously".

PhasmaFelis 11y ago

> Call it $50k total? Jesus fucking Christ. So I guess the lesson here for the average homeowner is "if you find a mercury spill, don't tell anyone or you'll lose your home"? Also: >They were using a Jerome meter, which can only measure down to 3000 ng/m3 when the safe indoor limit is 300 ng/m3 Huh? Why would a mercury-abatement crew use a mercury detection meter that can't actually detect hazardous levels of mercury?

ubercore 11y ago
My understanding was they weren't specifically a mercury-abatement crew, so they probably had detectors for a broad range of contaminants, but not specialized equipment for particular toxins. At least that's how I read it.
deleted 11y ago
[deleted]
mindslight 11y ago
> "if you find a mercury spill, don't tell anyone or you'll lose your home" Welcome to the Massachusetts DEP!
maxerickson 11y ago
Later he mentions the whole house pressure test, perhaps the crew is using the meter to search for the contaminated areas.
cbr 11y ago
They were initially using a Jerome meter to find the areas that needed cleanup, and then used the more sensitive but more expensive Lumex meter to finish the job. The first few days were with a less experienced crew (from the same company) but they were pretty clearly wrong to declare the house cleared without being able to measure below 3000 ng/m3.
FussyZeus 11y ago
Exactly what I was thinking, I'd consider myself pretty financially solid but $50k would ruin me. I'm assuming the OP was doing renovations of some kind already and had the cash on hand, or at least the majority of it.

fragsworth 11y ago

I had a physics class in a community college that had us handling open containers of mercury for our experiments. It was maybe 15 years ago. Someone in one of the classes managed to knock one of the jars over, and mercury spilled everywhere on the floor. Either the students hid their spill from the staff, or the staff just had some janitors do a simple sweeping of it, because I noticed spheres of mercury everywhere in that classroom throughout the semester. I didn't realize that mercury spills are such a huge issue until recently. The professor also seemed to be going crazy, which suggests to me that this happened more than once in the past and he was suffering from the effects of mercury poisoning.

cjbprime 11y ago
> I didn't realize that mercury spills are such a huge issue until recently. As the post mentions, the world at large didn't realize that vapors from mercury spills are toxic until recently.
- newjersey 11y ago
  Um, someone (not saying I) may or may not have played with mercury from a broken thermometer as a child. Is that person (not necessarily I) a walking health hazard? How does this work?
  - piyushpr134 11y ago
    I think this mercury scare is overrated. I have played with thermometer mercury many times as a child. I used to break thermometer to get the mercury out and play with it as it was very interesting liquid! Am still well and alive after 20-25 years.
    - Cthulhu_ 11y ago
      Alive? Yes. Sane? Arguable, :p
  - cjbprime 11y ago

ccvannorman 11y ago

It may have cost you $50,000 but you now have +50 karma on HN and rising. Some would say a bargain! ;-] In all seriousness, cool story, glad you're okay, and this makes me think "insurance" as a business needs to be re-thought entirely. How many times has it happened that insurance companies weasel out of paying? Objectively you might think THAT was their primary job.

deegles 11y ago
Wouldn't an insurance company that was TOO good at paying out go out of business? :)
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]
Empact 11y ago
Yep, an alternative model enabled by technology is mutual / cooperative insurance in which the policyholders not only own the company but also govern the release of funds. This way incentives are aligned - the insured want the insurance to act fairly, even with respect to others, so that it will be there for them. It would be something like gofundme but on a subscription basis, with up or down decision-making by subscribers. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_insurance https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_insurance
- JoshTriplett 11y ago
  Vanguard would be a good model to look towards.
- chimeracoder 11y ago
  > Yep, an alternative model enabled by technology is mutual / cooperative insurance in which the policyholders not only own the company but also govern the release of funds. This way incentives are aligned - the insured want the insurance to act fairly, even with respect to others That doesn't really align incentives, though. There's really no benefit to each individual to approving another person's claim (all it means is less money in the pot). Claims are rare enough that it's not enough to simply say 'if you vote this way for someone else, we'll apply the policy consistently for you', since the expected number of claims that a person is likely to file over the course of their plan is close to zero. (And even if it weren't, the whole issue is that insurance has relatively well-written rules for clear-cut cases, but the complaints people have - like this one - are generally about the interpretation of those policies for special cases, since policies can't possibly enumerate every possible outcome.)

hugium 11y ago

You have saved your children a few IQ points.

DanBlake 11y ago

wow. I remember as a kid ~20 years ago playing with mercury (my grandfather was a dentist and had a 1lb bottle of the stuff for some reason) I think if I found mercury in my house I would literally just scoop it up and bring it to the fire department without thinking about any health hazards of it. Is mercury truely that bad that short exposure is that dangerous? I mean, I wouldnt eat the stuff (or breath it in for extended periods) but I used to roll it around in my hands and whatnot as a kid without any effects. Considering how some people work with mercury ( see this : http://www.vice.com/video/el-dorado http://www.vice.com/video/el-dorado ) , I feel like you need quite a bit of exposure to be up shits creek. Then again, I'm not a doctor so dont listen to me.

mjmj 11y ago
Same! I was 7 (25 years ago) and my dad came home with it one day from his work in a vial and I remember him putting it in my hand and letting it roll around for a few seconds. Not sure what consequences I paid for that moment in time.
Terr_ 11y ago
IIRC one time touching cold liquid elemental mercury isn't that bad, the short-term problem is breathing mercury fumes or encountering various compounds that it can react to form. Any sort of persistent chronic exposure is definitely bad, of course, since like most "heavy metals" it accumulates and has long-term effects.
- emddudley 11y ago
  If you haven't seen mercury vapors under an ultraviolet light, it's quite dramatic: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JABbofwD3MI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JABbofwD3MI
  - spyder 11y ago
    It looks like same happens with dental amalgam fillings too (which also contains mercury): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw94F94FZqA https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bw94F94FZqA Most say it's safe (the FDA too) and that video just shows water vapor because mercury vapor wouldn't rise like that due to it's weight, but I'm not sure what to believe. http://quackfiles.blogspot.hu/2005/04/smoking-teeth-truth-gets-smoked-out.html http://quackfiles.blogspot.hu/2005/04/smoking-teeth-truth-ge... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy

steven777400 11y ago

I wonder how this kind of thing plays out for people that don't have anywhere near $50k available. I'm assuming since the company worked first and then invoiced, that the options would be either (1) sell the house and use the proceeds (assuming equity exists) to pay off the cleaning, or (2) declare bankruptcy. If the company were to require pre-payment for cleaning, then it's really just down to either (1) abandon and have the bank seize the house, or (2) sell the house for pennies on the dollar to an investor. Things like this (well, not this exotic, but like a busted sewer line which could cost $20k to replace) used to keep me up at night after we "bought" a house. I've found I can rest by mentally reframing the mortgage as rent and knowing that an "out" (strategic default) is always there if something goes very expensively wrong.

thaumaturgy 11y ago
You're forgetting (3): get the shopvac, vacuum it all up, and then dump it in the back yard. And yes, I know people that would do exactly that.
- cjbprime 11y ago
  Unfortunately in this case they ended up having to demolish a floor and ceiling to find all the mercury that had soaked through the floor; a shopvac won't do that.
  - cbr 11y ago
    A shopvac (or any vacuum not designed for mercury) would be a really bad idea: they vaporize the mercury and seriously distribute it around the house.
    - thaumaturgy 11y ago
      I agree with you both, but that doesn't change that I suspect this would be the default approach for a lot of people that have neither the money nor the ideology to justify a professional cleanup. An easy example of this kind of thinking is that people used to (and many still do) bury used motor oil in their yard. (See e.g. http://www.experienceproject.com/question-answer/How-Can-I-Dump-Used-Motor-Oil-In-My-Yard-Without-It-Killing-My-Grass/2144279 http://www.experienceproject.com/question-answer/How-Can-I-D...)

mindslight 11y ago

For $50k I'd at least get some further legal opinions. I believe there's also state laws about what the specific HOx policies can actually exclude (regardless of what the actual policy says), so perhaps there's something there. Although the causality is a latent condition from when you bought the house, which doesn't bode well. If you yourself had caused the spill when doing demo, I think you'd be in a stronger position.

jpatokal 11y ago

So people would use a mercury seal to put pressure on the water, allowing the system to run hotter without boiling. I didn't quite follow this part. Where in the system does the mercury go, how does it add pressure, and does it have anything to do with Wikipedia's description of using mercury in glass-to-metal seals? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-to-metal_seal#Mercury_seal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass-to-metal_seal#Mercury_se...

maxerickson 11y ago
It's a pressure valve. Here's the patent: https://heatinghelp.com/assets/documents/141.pdf https://heatinghelp.com/assets/documents/141.pdf I don't think I've a clear enough understanding of how it works to try to explain it.
- steckerbrett 11y ago
  It's essentially a pressure regulator I think.
steckerbrett 11y ago
Here's an EPA document which shows some pictures, look at page 2 for the unit the OP has. http://www.epa.gov/mercury/pdfs/EPA-905-F-11-008.pdf http://www.epa.gov/mercury/pdfs/EPA-905-F-11-008.pdf
fsavard2 11y ago
This page describes that system, I think: http://www.oldhouseweb.com/how-to-advice/gravity-hot-water-heating-continued.shtml http://www.oldhouseweb.com/how-to-advice/gravity-hot-water-h... (the "Honeywell Heat Generator")
- cbr 11y ago
  I've now linked that from the article; thanks! (I read that page when I was first reading about this the night of the spill, but had forgotten about it. Holohan is amazingly knowledgeable about old heating systems.)

nrjames 11y ago

This sounds so familiar... Here's a story about my 1961 house that is built on concrete slabs. About 18 months ago, we noticed a bit of the hardwood floor was bubbling up. We ignored it. About 6 months ago, our water pressure started to drop and then disappeared altogether. The plumber came and told us that our well pump (which was relatively new) wasn't working. They pulled the pump and the PVC bushing around it was cracked, so it had been running nonstop trying to keep pressure up. Plumbers fixed the crack, put the pump back in, it still wasn't working... They pulled it again and replaced it. I mentioned to the plumber that the floor was bubbling up and he told me that what likely happened is that the supply line was leaking under the slab (where they put them in the 1960s), probably causing the floor to bubble and the well pump to turn on and off frequently, increasing torque on the bushing, which caused it to crack and subsequently burn out the motor. He referred me to a contracting group that could help with the problem under the slab. Fast forward to June of this year. Contractors begin to pull up the wooden floor, only to find there's asbestos-laden linoleum under it. An asbestos remediation firm came and removed the entire wooden floor and the asbestos. (Note: the wooden floor was parquet, of a formerly-standard size that no longer is made, meaning to replace it and match the rest of the house, we would have to find somebody to cut each tiny little board.) Early July, contractors jackhammer into the slab and cannot find a leak. While investigating, we discover that the septic tank is full and backed up, likely from some landscapers running over the septic field with a bobcat about 3 yrs ago. It had been slowly draining and we had it serviced 18 months ago, but it was again full and plumbers began to speculate that sewage was standing in the lines under the house and that an old septic line was leaking -- not the supply line. Nobody can figure out what to do because the original plans to the house are missing, the plans to an addition are missing, and nobody knows where the supply lines or septic really run, in spite of the fact they had snaked cameras through them 4 times. Meanwhile, we have a huge hole with ragged pieces of rebar and concrete everywhere in our family room. My 2 and 4 yr old daughters learn to walk around it carefully because it's impossible to get to the kitchen without walking through the family room. Plumbers come back 4 weeks later with a plan to replace the supply lines and the septic lines. We have to take a break to get insurance approval and take out a HELOC to cover costs that insurance won't cover. This takes a while. Ten weeks after the first hole in the slab, they start digging to replace the septic/supply lines and they mistakenly break into the air ducts running under the slab (the fancy new thing to do in 1961). Surprise: the air ducts are made of a fibrous material that sort of looks like cardboard but might contain asbestos. Today, the asbestos remediation people came and took a sample. The HVAC repair people (took 4 companies to find somebody to attempt to repair the 'cardboard' ducts) put a camera in them and found that the vibrations from the jackhammer used to cut the slab (likely) had caused many other collapses in the air ducts in the same room. The only saving grace here is that it appears that the 'cardboard' ducts only were used in that room and that they are metal in the rest of the house (please please please). Now, the demolition team has to come back and remove most of the rest of the slab in that room and in the kitchen in order to replace the 'cardboard' ducts that are collapsed; all prior to doing final repairs on the supply and septic lines running under the slab. When that's done, we'll have to repair the slab, get new floors, new kitchen countertops, and hope that we can move back in. We've been in a hotel with our two daughters on-and-off for the past 3 months. I really hope we're in the house by Christmas. Please be very careful if you purchase an old house. Here are some pictures: http://imgur.com/a/JxiKl http://imgur.com/a/JxiKl FYI, ours is an old Westinghouse Total Electric Model Home (pdf): http://www.ncmodernist.org/westinghousehousebroch.pdf http://www.ncmodernist.org/westinghousehousebroch.pdf p.s. That was way more than I intended to write here. p.p.s. Total bill, to date is > $50k. Insurance is covering 95% of it. Amica is wonderful.

cbr 11y ago

Author here: happy to answer questions.

FrankenPC 11y ago
How long have you owned the house? Toxic waste like that are grounds to sue the previous owner if not disclosed during the purchase...at least in California.
- cbr 11y ago
  We bought the house in February. We might try to sue people, but it's pretty clear the previous owners don't have much money. (The house was mortgaged to within a few-k of the selling price, and they had stopped paying their monthly payments. Which made it pretty hard to actually buy the house! http://www.jefftk.com/p/house-buying-timeline http://www.jefftk.com/p/house-buying-timeline)
  - FrankenPC 11y ago
    So sorry you had to go through this. It's a legit homeowners nightmare. What could be worse? Some kind of crazy crawlspace mold outbreak?
- rtkwe 11y ago
  > I talked to a lawyer, who didn't think we'd be likely to succeed if we tried to get the insurance company to pay anyway. They did think whoever owned the house at the time of the spill would be liable, but it would be hard to prove that the spill happened at a certain time and they may not have the money. Right from the article. Sounds like there have been multiple owners, no way to assign blame. Last owner probably can't be fined for something they had no knowledge of.
  - Gibbon1 11y ago
    I'm not sure, but maybe this is something title insurance is supposed to cover?

grecy 11y ago

A friend of mine has a "mercury blob maze" [1] where you have a little blob of mercury trapped in a plastic container and you have to get it through the maze - it was fun to use at different temperatures, as the blob would want to break apart when hot, or not move at all when cold. Shaking it turns it into 300 blobs. Upon seeing it, my science teacher dad had some cool stories about playing with Mercury 20-30 years ago in high school classes. They used to take it out and handle it, no big deal :) [1] Like these https://www.google.com/search?q=mercury+blob+maze&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X https://www.google.com/search?q=mercury+blob+maze&source=lnm...

imglorp 11y ago
Yup, we did that. Also, they gave us some freon in a baggie to play with phase change, and we used carbon tetrachloride and benzine in our o-chem class like it was nothing. That stuff's all off limits these days I guess, along with "real" chemistry sets for kids.
dynomight 11y ago
I used to play with those (mercury blob mazes) at electronic/junk shops when I was a little kid. Currently I've got a small collecting of mercury switches and rather large jar of mercury in the basement... It's neat stuff.
jandrese 11y ago
Elemental Mercury isn't especially dangerous though. People freak out over the word "Mercury" but forms like that aren't bioavailable for the most part and are reasonably safe. I wouldn't go breathing the fumes for extended periods of time, but holding a pool in your hand in science class isn't going to kill you. That's why it's a bit frustrating to read stories like this where the cleanup crew goes overboard and racks up tens of thousands of dollars worth of bills for a simple spill.
- cbr 11y ago
  Breathing the fumes for an extended period of time? That's exactly what we would have had without the remediation.

gwern 11y ago

What's really crazy is that apparently some people have the idea that mercury is an 'investment' and will voluntarily keep jugs of it in their home: http://www.ert.org/products/mercury_response_guide/AttachmentA.pdf http://www.ert.org/products/mercury_response_guide/Attachmen...

johnloeber 11y ago
That document turned out to be a very interesting, thorough read. I think it's more crazy that mercury is apparently still used in ritualistic/spiritual contexts.
kragen 11y ago
That document says, "People often keep jars of mercury in their homes because they think that mercury is worth money, like liquid silver. In reality, mercury is nearly worthless, but the cleanup cost after a large spill easily can exceed the cost of a home." http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/mercury/mcs-2015-mercu.pdf http://minerals.usgs.gov/minerals/pubs/commodity/mercury/mcs... gives the price of mercury as US$1850 per 76-pound flask, up from US$1076 in 2010. That's US$54/kg, or US$730 per liter at 13.5 g/cc (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28element%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_%28element%29). Silver is currently http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver.html http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/silver.html US$15.76 per troy ounce, which is US$506.70/kg or US$5315 per liter at 10.49 g/cc (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silver). Silver also has the advantage that it won't make you sick if you spill it. As a point of comparison, copper is sufficiently expensive that people steal copper pipes and wires from unoccupied houses. Copper costs US$2.41/lb. (US$5.31/kg), less than 1% of the cost of mercury. The junk man in the slum where I'm going this afternoon will pay you AR$35/kg for it, which is US$2.23/kg, which is enough to incentivize the cartoneros to break the yokes off any CRT discarded on the street within hours. (He doesn't list a price for mercury on his sign.) So "nearly worthless" seems like an exaggeration — mercury is worth more per liter than any other commodity substance you're likely to have in your house other than silver and Freon-22 — but it also doesn't seem like a really smart investment, especially if you have kids.

31reasons 11y ago

As a kid I often played with mercury used in a blood pressure monitor. Spilling it on the table and mesmerized by its look and feel. I am not sure what damages that might have caused to my brain now that I know its toxic!

tirant 11y ago
I did the same. I broke an old thermometer just to play with the mercury. I used to keep it in a small metal box. Some years later I went to check it, and I had all disappeared from the metal box!!

mirimir 11y ago

That's arguably overkill for domestic contamination by elemental and inorganic mercury. Even that family in that contaminated house was probably at far greater risk from methylmercury[0] in predatory fish. So cutting predatory fish from the diet would have arguably been more cost effective. But it's hard to say. CDC[1] is more nuanced on the topic than EPA[2]. And I do tend to trust CDC. [0] http://toxics.usgs.gov/definitions/methylmercury.html http://toxics.usgs.gov/definitions/methylmercury.html [1] http://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/pdf/Mercury_FactSheet.pdf http://www.cdc.gov/biomonitoring/pdf/Mercury_FactSheet.pdf [2] http://www3.epa.gov/airtoxics/hlthef/mercury.html http://www3.epa.gov/airtoxics/hlthef/mercury.html

brianpan 11y ago
They have a 1.5 year-old that undoubtably puts everything in his/her mouth. Even the CDC factsheet says the impact of low levels of exposure is unknown. And we're not talking about the milligrams in a CFL bulb, a speck of mercury. This was cups of mercury.
- venomsnake 11y ago
  You can drink mercury and nothing bad will happen. It is the vapors that hurt you. A lot. A toddler breathing mercury vapors is bad idea. Of course bucket of sulfur will go a long way towards cleaning this up.
  - keithpeter 11y ago
    I was thinking 'drop yellow sulfur over the floor' as I read the first paragraph and when the fire officers arrived. As I read the rest of the article and found the section that describes the source and progress of the spill, I realised that a more radical cleanup would be needed. I'm in my late 50s and we used to use mercury liberally at school and after. I'm talking half a gallon of the stuff to demostrate the Toricelli vacuum, and later at University for floating bearings. Always dirty on surface, so low vapour. Bucket of sulfur in the lab. I'm not recommending a return to those days (benzene, carbon-tet, acetone on tap &c).
- 11y ago

ghshephard 11y ago

I once had a ceiling leak of water from my upstairs neighbor. I called a contractor, and he broke open a segment of the ceiling where my vent was - and the entire gap between my unit and upstairs looked like something from Venus - terrifying colors/growths taking place. The contractor said that there was a massive mold infusion, and that we would need a hazardous material team to come clean it up, and we were looking at a bill of around $20,000 - $30,000 for the team to come do the full cleanup of the riser. I freaked out a little, and thankfully had a calm property management company that just said, "Look the area above bathrooms always looks like this, and we just need to have the people upstairs caulk a bit better around their bathtub, and we'll be fine. I'm not going to claim I have any idea whether calling the HazMat/FireDepartment team makes sense here (Hell, Mercury is dangerous) - but it's always a good idea to see if there are safe alternatives that might save you several tens of thousands of dollars.

dhbanes 11y ago
Wait, so the property management company (which would be responsible for facilitating the mold remediation at the very least, or paying for it if they own the property or were liable for the issue in the first place) told you that mold was no big deal and your upstairs neighbors just need to caulk a little more around their bath tub (also the responsibility of the property owner) and that calmed you down? Mold and fungi can certainly be harmful to humans. The interests of your landlords and property managers are not aligned with yours in this case.
- jessaustin 11y ago
  From the context it seems likely that GP owns a condo, so bills like that would not be sent to property management. Also if anyone has an interest to lie it is mold remediation contractors whose entire business is built on exaggeration.
  - ghshephard 11y ago
    Exactly correct. It was my Condo, and if it was an exterior wall, then the Home Owners Association would be charged a "Special Fee" (We had recently dropped $100+K on repairing wall damage from a rain leak) - but ceiling damage would have been on me. To make matters worse, they were renters living in the upstairs unit, and when I contacted the owner, it turned out he was a lawyer, and initially all he said was, "If you have a problem, sue me." Thankfully, the manager of our property management board was much more sane, had seen the space above bathroom vents, knew that it always looked funky (lots of moisture going up through those vents), and saved me $30K. I guess my point was - given a choice, a subcontractor can always turn a minor clean up into a $50K project, but it's entirely possible, there is a $5K choice as well that the home owner might want to consider pursuing.

gcb0 11y ago

> there was a dusy little puddle what's a dusy?

gruez 11y ago
reworded: there was a [little puddle that was dusty]
- gcb0 11y ago
  was that a slang/neologism/typo? honestly curious. english third language and all...
  - davidcollantes 11y ago
    I assume it a typo.
cbr 11y ago
Sorry, typo for "dusty". Fixed.

ksec 11y ago

Is there anything else in the modern world where we still uses mercury in this large amount of quantity? If so why?

yongjik 11y ago
Well, there's this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Zenith_Telescope https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Large_Zenith_Telescope (I'm not sure how much Mercury the telescope uses.)
mirimir 11y ago
The standard low-tech approach for gold mining: 1) mix crushed ore with mercury; 2) let sit for a while; 3) boil off mercury over a fire; 4) sell gold. Maybe you try to condense some of the mercury. But mercury is cheap compared to gold, so why bother? Also, we burn lots of coal. And coal contains mercury. Anyway see this cool EPA page: http://www2.epa.gov/international-cooperation/mercury-emissions-global-context http://www2.epa.gov/international-cooperation/mercury-emissi...
carlob 11y ago
There is a mercury fountain in Barcelona http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/calder-mercury-fountain http://www.atlasobscura.com/places/calder-mercury-fountain
wycx 11y ago
There would be a few 10s of mililitres in a mercury diff pump. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_pump https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diffusion_pump

Too 11y ago

In the end he is using the $50k expense as an argument for renting instead of buying. I am wondering, if you were to rent, would your landlord actually cover this? Sounds like that would be equally hard as claiming it on insurance or previous owner of house. I can imagine the response being something along "our janitor was qualified to clean it up and you shouldn't have called haz team" or simply that the leak wasn't their fault. On the other hand you can easily bail out and just rent another place, unless the queue to get a rental is 3years+ in your city.

mirimir 11y ago
No, you just move. Not your problem. And I doubt that the lease would stand in court.

sirseal 11y ago

Wow. That's crazy expensive. I'm glad to hear about this story. I don't think I'd pay $50k for something like this.

c1sc0 11y ago

This makes me feel bad for breaking a thermometer as a little boy just to play with the mercury inside.

davidcollantes 11y ago

When I was a child, me and my nephews (which are about my own age) used to go to the pharmacy to buy thermometers, and break them for their mercury. With time we accumulated enough to fill up a mid-sized crystal jar, I would say around 200 grams. We played with that mercury a lot. We passed it between our hands, which later held treats we ate. We laid down on the grown, and pour it in our closed eyes, letting it drop on the side of our faces. The only thing we came short of doing was putting mercury in our mouth. No harm ever came to us as a result. I would have cleaned the spill for free, if I get to keep the mercury. ;-)

cbr 11y ago
No harm ever came to us as a result. I think you're probably right, but how do you know? It's very hard to compare yourself to a version of you who didn't have that kind of exposure as a kid.
- davidcollantes 11y ago
  True. What I meant to say was, I was not poisoned, nor felt sick, and so far I am into my 50s. I know there might still be time to pay for what I did as a child...

unicornporn 11y ago

Does anyone get near aroused by this kind of web design? I love it and wish every site could be "dumbed down" to this kind of easy navigation and reading experience. I know there are "reader views" in many modern browser, but I'd also like the site structure and navigation to be easier to overview. Sort of a WAP view for the twenty-tens.

cbr 11y ago
Thanks! I'm glad you like the design. It's a slow evolution of doing the minimum necessary to keep raw html readable as things change. It started out as completely unstyled, then gained a max-width as screens got wider, and eventually a little bit of media-querying to make things look better on phones, but it's still really basic.
- unicornporn 11y ago
  > It's a slow evolution of doing the minimum necessary to keep raw html readable as things change I like it and I've been experimenting with exactly the same thing. However, it's kind of hard for me to not get carried away and start adding a superfluous line CSS here and there. :-) How do you pull in the comments from multiple sources BTW? Is it a manual process?
  - cbr 11y ago
    I pull the comments in with: https://github.com/jeffkaufman/webscripts/blob/master/comment_requester_wsgi.py https://github.com/jeffkaufman/webscripts/blob/master/commen... (Which isn't completely up to date; I have some changes I need to push public like hn-support.)

spacecowboy_lon 11y ago

Do American house buyers not have a survey done. In the UK its a requirement of a Mortgage application.

cbr 11y ago
We did have a home inspection, but the only way to find this would have been to rip up the floor or bring in a mercury vapor analyzer, neither of which are customary (in the US or UK).

shawnee_ 11y ago

Disagree with his last point here: (One thing this illustrates is that the downside risk of owning is much higher than with renting.) Financial risk, yes; health risk, no. Only a homeowner who owns and lives in the dwelling would care enough to follow the proper procedure for cleaning up a hazardous materials spill such as this. Landlords who invest in buildings (old, decrepit buildings) for the renters' income have almost zero incentive to handle a situation like this correctly.

crzwdjk 11y ago
In this case, I believe OP is actually a landlord, who invested in this old decrepit building for rental income. But what do you know, he has plenty of incentive to handle this situation as thoroughly as possible, because he lives there too! Moral of the story: "homeowner" and "landlord" are not mutually exclusive.

SQL2219 11y ago

Effects of Mercury on Brain Neuron Degeneration https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipi3OneIw0A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ipi3OneIw0A

kragen 11y ago

Does US$38k to clean up a few cups of mercury seem ridiculous to anybody else? That would be a very dangerous quantity of mercury if it were in a form like dimethylmercury, but it was metallic mercury. Wouldn't it make more sense to dump some powdered metal into it to amalgamate it, sweep it up and put it in a bag, and open the windows to let the house air out for a day or two?

jobu 11y ago
This was my thought as well - I've heard metallic mercury is relatively safe. However, a little bit of googling turned up this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#Elemental_mercury https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mercury_poisoning#Elemental_me... The issue with metallic mercury is the vapors are easily absorbed through the lungs, and not easily filtered (requires an activated carbon filter).
- kragen 11y ago
  It is indeed relatively safe, in the sense that it takes thousands of times as much metallic mercury to kill you as it would take dimethylmercury. But vapors from metallic mercury have been known to cause acute poisoning for centuries; that article mentions a well-known case from 1810.
jonknee 11y ago
The whole story seems ridiculous. When I read about calling the fire department I knew it was going to be a long ride of bureaucratic insanity. My dad used to play with mercury as a kid and apparently that was common. I think he would have swept it up and saved $38k.
- JshWright 11y ago
  Knowing what you now know about mercury toxicity, would you have done that? Would you have done that with your young child in the house?
  - 11y ago