Mercury animals

The final method of mercury animation we will examine is the way of the Divine Cinnabar. This process requires a great deal of care as it is quite dangerous, but is held to be one of the most powerful ways to animate metallic mercury and produce the Philosophical Stone. We begin with metallic mercury purified with salt and vinegar as above. 

Many different methods are used on a broad scale to obtain spherical particles with sizes of 0.2-100 /urn from steel, polystyrene, vulcanized and unvulcanized rubber, plastics, mercury, animal and vegetable waxes, paraffin wax, and other materials. 

Exposure. The exposure of humans and animals to mercury from the general environment occurs mainly by inhalation and ingestion of terrestrial and aquatic food chain items. Pish generally rank the highest (10—300 ng/g) in food chain concentrations of mercury. Swordfish and pike may frequently exceed 1 p.g/g (27). Most of the mercury in fish is methyl mercury [593-74-8]. Worldwide, the estimated average intake of total dietary mercury is 5—10 p-g/d in Europe, Russia, and Canada, 20 pg/d in the United States, and 40—80 pg/d in Japan (27). 

Air pollutants that present a hazard to livestock, therefore, are those that are taken up by vegetation or deposited on the plants. Only a few pollutants have been observed to cause harm to animals. These include arsenic, fluorides, lead, mercury, and molybdenum. 

Heavy metals on or in vegetation and water have been and continue to be toxic to animals and fish. Arsenic and lead from smelters, molybdenum from steel plants, and mercury from chlorine-caustic plants are major offenders. Poisoning of aquatic life by mercury is relatively new, whereas the toxic effects of the other metals have been largely eliminated by proper control of industrial emissions. Gaseous (and particulate) fluorides have caused injury and damage to a wide variety of animals—domestic and wild—as well as to fish. Accidental effects resulting from insecticides and nerve gas have been reported. 

Koeman, J.H. and van Genderen, H. (1970). Tissue levels in animals and effects caused by chlorinated hydrocarbon insecticides, chlorinated biphenyls, and mercury in the marine environment along the Netherlands coast. FAO Technical Conference on Marine Pollution. Rome, December 1970. 

Standards imposed to the industrial waste streams charged in heavy metals are more and more drastic in accordance with the updated knowledges of the toxicity of mercury, cadmium, lead, chromium... when they enter the human food chain after accumulating in plants and animals (Forster Wittmann, 1983). Nowadays, the use of biosorbents (Volesky, 1990) is more and more considered to complete conventional (physical and chemical) methods of removal that have shown their limits and/or are prohibitively expensive for metal concentrations typically below 100 mg.l-i. 

Calabrese A, Thurberg FP, Dawson MA, WenzlofF DR. 1975. Sublethal physiological stress induced by cadmium and mercury in the winter flounder (Pseudoplumnectes amer-icanus). In Koeman JH, Strik JJ, editors, Sublethal effects of toxic chemicals on aquatic animals. Amsterdam Elsevier. 

Doi R. 1991. Individual difference of methyhnercury metabolism in animals and its significance in methylmercury toxicity. In Suzuki T, Imura N, Clarkson TW, editors. Advances in mercury toxicology. New York (NY) Plenum Press. 

Omata S, Toribara TY, Cemichiari E, Clarkson TW. 1988. Biotransformation of methyl-mercury in-vitro in the tissues of wild and laboratory animals. Fifty-ninth Annual Meeting of the Zoological Society of Japan, Sapporo, Japan, Zool Soc Tokyo, Japan. 

Mercury (Hg) contamination is widespread in water, in surficial soils and sediments, and in the tissues of plants and animals in ecosystems around the globe. Once deposited to terrestrial and aquatic ecosystems, some inoiganic mercury is transformed into methylmercury (MeHg), a highly toxic compoimd that bioaccumulates efficiently in food webs (Wiener et al. 2003). As a result of the toxicity of MeHg to wildlife and humans, many nations are interested in reducing environmental mercury contamination and associated biotic exposure (UNEP 2002). 

We are just beginning to understand the effects that trace elements and compounds may have on man and his environment. For most of these we do not know what the toxic levels in man and animals are. Not only are some very dangerous in very small amounts, like cadmium and mercury, but others are necessary. 

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