No matter what kind of business you run, you’ll want to keep people as safe as possible. Depending on the type of business you run, one risk to people’s health could be mercury exposure. Mercury is a highly toxic heavy metal. If someone gets exposed to this hazardous substance, it can result in serious consequences pertaining to their health. After all, mercury can affect the circulatory, immune, reproductive, digestive, and nervous systems, along with various organs like the lungs and kidneys. This is why it’s important to know how mercury exposure can happen, since it will help you determine how to avoid such problems. Keep reading to find out how one can experience mercury exposure.
Mercury Thermometers
Mercury thermometers use varying ranges of mercury, some having about 500mg while others could have as many as 54,000mg, depending on the type of thermometer you have. Elemental mercury vapor can be absorbed into the body with relative ease if it’s in the air. If a thermometer breaks, you can also be exposed to liquid mercury, which can cause assimilation through the GI tract.
Spilled mercury from these thermometers is especially dangerous since it splits into much smaller microbeads. These microbeads are not only smaller, but they also affect a wider area, making it easier to be exposed to mercury to some degree.
Fluorescent Light Bulbs
Keep reading to find out how one can experience mercury exposure.
While fluorescent light bulbs don’t contain as much mercury (less than 10mg), you still have to be careful when using them. If one of these light bulbs were to break, fluorescent light will emit mercury vapor constantly, which can be extremely dangerous to anyone in the area. Proper disposal of these light bulbs is also necessary in order to properly contain the mercury that they have.
Vaccines With Thimerosal
There are some flu vaccinations that use a preservative known as thimerosal. Thimerosal gets metabolized into the human body in order to create ethylmercury. Each vaccination dose will have around 12.5-25 micrograms of ethylmercury within it. With that said, vaccinations that are only for children do not use thimerosal anymore.
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