Mercury, Lead and Arsenic in Electronics recycling

[coondogtheman1234]

1:33 I will always have a use for CCFL lamps as long as they have the inverters. Not sure If I told u this but I made a light out of the scan head part of an old flatbed scanner and run it off 12V. it works great when the power goes out.

[AnasTangi]

What do we do with Mercury if we find some in our spare parts?

I remember when I was young, during the lessons of physics in the lab, one of my friends used to put his hands in a big mercury jar all the time and play with it. I never thought it could be that dangerous, or is it?

Thanks

[Aussie50]

@AnasTangi I would contact your local waste authority and see if they have a disposal service for it, assuming you don't want to sell it for chemistry uses.

it is very dangerous to contact mercury on that level!n even prolonged exposure to a tiny amount it enough to give mercury poisoning. the vapors that come off it are the worst, heating it can result in death if you inhale enough.

[AwesomeDude775]

what about encapsulating mercury switches

[AwesomeDude775]

blow up the lithium batteries

[zackthegoth]

thanks for the heads up, I will certainly be careful from now on. I like to tear electronics apart too.

[TheCaptainLulz]

ME wants O_O! That stuffs getting harder to find and I love the chemistry of mercury (done safely with a chem-mask of course).

[nucleochemist]

Very good video and advice. I am an industrial chemist and can tell you've done your homework. If you can collect enough devices containing large amounts of mercury, some recycling/disposal companies which recover it themselves may pay you. Depends if you want lots of mercury around the place in the mean time, I guess.

[Aussie50]

@nucleochemist , so far I havn't mad money from them, but disposing of CFL, Lithium, LCD, PDP and pure mercury scrap hasn't cost me anything thankfully

[SweStuff94]

@Aussie50 hi man du like take care of ur old toxit shit and turn it in or do u trow it in the nerest forest?

[glassjb]

mercury is worth some money now so its worth selling we still play with it at school but only with gloves or only with finger nails . never touch mercury with bare skin

[30GB]

mercury is some scary shit

[RacoonHat]

Amen brother.

[008626]

wow those tilt switches have a ton of mercury in them - i have four small vials from old thermostats but they have nowhere near the volume those do

cool find! I'd keep them just because they look neat

[Aussie50]

sorry mate, indeed i can't supply you with one, mainly since that load of Hg scrap went out last week for disposal with my lithium batteries and other crap.

plus shipping reg's to the US prolly won't allow it either

[Aussie50]

Asbestos insulation is another good one to look out for folks, the water heater had glass fiber around it, but some are so old they have asbestos around the tanks and you must use a cartridge type respirator, gloves and think plastic bags to dispose of it.

Anything really old, that uses a lot of heat, will generally have Asbestos in it.

[NOBOX7]

you may whant to hang on to that mercury

a day may come when you need to make some mercury fulminate,if the shit ever hits the fan bro we all need ways to protect are selfs,but any way its good to see your not a carless bstrd,i also am going to pay for my past ignorants,like grinding on lead solder joints with a 30000 rpm wheel,lol ya im not that foolish any more,any thanks for the vid also did you no microwaves have some very nasty stuff in the ceramic its called berly oxide i think

[Aussie50]

Mmm, MF ;) great stuff!

When the scrap market was raging and prices were high, I had a 9" drop saw motor mounted on my steel table with a abrasive cutoff disk on it. i used it to strip the lead solder connections off thousands of PCB's for scrap components. even with a dust mask i could still feel the fine dust in my lungs!

basically its put me off shredding and abrading electronic goods completely!

"heavy metal poisoning" isn't just to do with the music I listen to ;)

[NOBOX7]

dam brow if only i could get my hands

on some of this,thanks for the tips i broke a cathode lamp in my house ,any way

i always wanted to build a mercury egine

thats pumps mercury threw a heat coil and confines the expansion until its released explosivly on a piston

[Aussie50]

I've never herd of a mercury engine before but it sounds dangerous!

The Hg content is cold cathode lamps is pretty minimal, but repeated exposure isn;t reccomended.

[coolbluelights]

man when I was like 8 years old I found a mercury switch and I was playing with the mercury it in a cup and stuff and then I read it was poisonous so I got rid of it. but I don't remember where. I hope it doesn't mess with me someday :S

[Aussie50]

Its mainly prolonged exposure that gets you, if you played with it regularly for a few months you'd take some damage, but a brief encounter isn;t going to turn you into the 'mad hatter'

by now it would have worked its way out of your system.

I did the same with a Hg from a thermometer for a while, prolly why I'm as eccentric as i am ;)

[NOBOX7]

beryllium oxide. These ceramics often appear somewhat pink or purple-colored. Note that beryllium oxide is white so relying on the color to identify its presence would be unwise. Beryllium is a serious chemical hazard if crushed and inhaled, or otherwise ingested. Beryllium is listed as a confirmed human carcinogen by the IARC; therefore, broken ceramic insulators or magnetrons should not be directly handled

[NOBOX7]

this oxide is also a structural ceramic

its the pink stuff on the electron guns in tv

tubes its used in many high temp

electrical devices

[Aussie50]

Thanks for the info man!, I didn't realize it is BeO2!.

I don't normally smash them but have done it the past!

My magnetron scrapping technique involves parting the end caps off in the lathe to leave me with a clean solid copper core.

[Aussie50]

Make that BeO, Beo2 would be a dioxide.