How to Dispose of Mercury

Where are you located? You'll need to follow federal, state, provincial and/or local guidelines, and such things vary.

Why not to sell to other country?

This is very poor answer. HAve you thought what if I have spill from old thermometer in some country like remote village in India or in Aferica. The spill will result in more damage than good.

One way to dispose it is take liquid glue and pour around mercury and then on the top and let it dry. When su colid pick it up using spoon and store in container. You can dispose by giving to disposing agency or you can dig hole in ground and burry it and will be safe

I don't think the quantity contained in a thermometer is enough to cause any harm. The mercury will probably just evaporate.

He said a large quantity.

He can probably contact a local hospital and find out who they use for their hazardous waste disposal.

He can probably contact the Department of Transportation in his area or the Fire Department since both will have information on the handling of Hazardous waste.

No, burying a large quantity of mercury in the ground will evaporate and affect everyone around with mercury poisoning.

Not true the upper limit is in ppm level. When I was saying to burry is like we do here for high radio active waste. Only difference is it is not radio active we can collect in comon glue put in steel container and store underground till find the right way to dispose. Till time just store this all I mean.

Only time I will do that if it is small quantity store till disposed

Thank you.

I'm not familiar with the procedures for actually disposing of the waste.

I am in favor of recycling it.

What would make mercury unrecyclable? It's a metal with a low temperature evaporation level. It should be easy to separate it from other impurities.

Masyood murcury is beeing widely used in my own city without any problem. as there many manufacturer of thermometers here.

Is it crime to sell murcury? I dont think so. so long you follow all packaing and shipping norms. and also you are licenced to sell it.

It is controlled commodity. When I was growing in Jamshedpur, at that time it was Bihar now Jadkhand State only thing we had was mercury based therometer.

In US improper disposal of mercary is crime. One has to document its use in electronic product if shiped to Europe and is restricted by RoHS and WEES. This is like lead but little bad than lead.

All mercury and mercury-containing items should be recycled. As long as mercury is recycled, it will stay in the recycling loop, going into new products rather than into the environment. If your community does not have a Household Hazardous Waste Facility or Clean Sweep, contact a local public health department for disposal information. Or you can contact the USEPA.

Several years ago, I came into about 300 ml of elemental Hg, stored in a small liquor bottle. I offered the sample to the physics teacher at the local high school.. he accepted, I got rid of it, everybody happy!

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Remember: "Semper ubi sub ubi" (Always where under where)

Nice. Welcome to CR4.

milo

Either hit it with a hammer :P or, take it to Sellafield, where they dispose of it

You can sell it and make a few dollars. A few years ago I had several hundred pounds to get rid of, and found a recycle company that bought it. I'm not at work now, so I don't have the link. However, google mercury scrap, and that will put you in the right direction. It definitely has value.

According to local legend, there's a lake of it underground in a tomb near where the Terracotta Warriors were exhumed, in China. What about tipping it into that lake?

Or we could just put it back where we got...

start manufacturing thermomitors =)

or repackage and sell to dentists for use as fillings ;-P

BTW is it pure or recovered?

Amer,

I don't know where you are. Industrial waste disposal companies would take it off your hands and recycle it if possible. We had a small amount, used in mercury diffusion pumps in electron microscopes, which used to be recycled. We got rid of it through CleanAway (Australia). I don't know what they did with it. - Regards, John.

Sell, sell, sell. Let someone else make use of it!

Nothing is "scrap" - everything has a use.

We used to drop little bubbles of it on to the floor
and watch it "explode" in the labs, when we were kids.
(a life time ago; brings back memeories.)

jt.

http://www.metalworld.com/a/view/0165.html

milo

Feed it to Bernie Madoff and other crooked bankers.

From many posts it seams to me that mercury is an unwanted item on earth.Is it?

I Believe it should be only disposed if it is not usable at all, as cost of mercury is very high in open market. disposition of usable material as waste means equal amount of reproduction of same material to support the supply.

<...mercury is an unwanted item on earth.Is it?...>

Mercury is an essential for some processes. As are plutonium, and cadmium. It isn't the substance, it's the use of it and the human and environmental exposure to it that is under question.

Apart from a few outgoing space rockets, incoming meteorites and the odd nuclear reaction, everything that is here now was more-or-less forever here in some shape or form. So all that is needed is the correct place for the unwanted substance. "Pollution" is simply the word that encompasses the effect of a substance being in the wrong place.

"Throw it away?" There is no "away".

"Where there's muck, there's brass [i.e. money]."

Sell it to a Gold miner. They use it to recover gold.

Find a Waste Treatment, Storage and Disposal (TSD) Facility close to you. They should be able to pack/transport/ship it for you. Depending on where you are, the generator of the waste is responsible for it, even after it leaves your site.

I have seen part of the world where there is no facility for disposal of any waste. Even home waste they through out side of house and this too big thing to ask. It is important to consider which part of the world email originate and we take care based on facility in that part of the world.

We in USA are fortunate with the facility we have to run a life with some kind of norms and check and balances. Some laws are better than other but over all we have developed a society which has rules and respect for rules and education to understand and follow those.

I will not name but I was on visit and work on one of my subatical and saw local public facility puts 55 gallon drum for dumping house garbage and within week all disappeared.

Masyood

SEll it

if you just want to get rid of mercury which you say you have in large quantity, give an ad in widely read newspaper that mercury is available free. i think the metal is used in compact flourescent lamps, the energy saving lights and the manufacturers may be interested if they get a raw material free.

of course, it is not unlikely if somebody asks in the cr4 forum how to dispose of burnt compact flurescent lamps which contain mercury