ZZMike… technical info…
I spilled a small amount of mercury and decided to do an EPA-style cleanup. Part of that involved renting a mercury vapor meter, so I could actually measure what happened.
Liquid mercury per se is not particularly toxic (people used to ingest significant quantities of it as medicine, and those of us old enough used to play around with it as kids).
However, if the surface area grows because it gets smeared onto the right sort of surface (cloth, for example), the evaporation is much higher and the levels in the air reach toxic amounts. I measured this myself – where a minute fraction of the mercury from a thermometer got onto a rug.
My conclusion – a little bit of mercury can result in air levels exceeding EPA and OSHA standards. This is probably not really an issue except perhaps for children or pregnant folks.
