Public service announcement: if you have any mercury thermometers in your house, dispose of them properly now. If you don’t, one of them might break, causing a spill and necessitating visits from the Wood County Health Department, the Ohio EPA, and a (really expensive) environmental cleanup posse from EQ. Mercury vapors are toxic, and the stuff vaporizes at 55°F, so one of the things they’ll bring is a sniffer that will tell you whether your house is fit for habitation or not. You’ll also get an Ohio EPA incident number, which is sort of like a scarlet letter except that it’s not scarlet.
Update: the posse is here, using their special mercury vacuum. They are very thorough and quite pleasant.
The backstory: Arlene was going to make a cake for dinner, since the missionaries were coming. She got out a cake pan and noticed some odd scratches on it. On closer inspection, not only were there scratches– there was a small dollop of elemental Hg. I poked it with a pencil a few times to make sure that’s what it was, then called the Ohio EPA. They took my information and I got a quick callback, followed by a call from the health department, followed by the arrival of DJ and his mercury posse.
Paul's Down-Home Page 