Hi everyone, and welcome back to Cody'sLab
So, many of you may remember this:
Tune in next week when I go to the hospital and get a blood test
to see how much mercury I have in my system
It's been a little bit more than the week that I said
but I did hold true to my promise and I went to the hospital
and I had my blood drawn and the sample sent off to a lab
to measure the mercury and lead levels
It's now some time after that and I finally have the results
You can see that my mercury level in my blood is not elevated
in fact, it's in the normal range
which means I do not have mercury poisoning at all
if we go look at the lead levels
lead levels are a bit high
but still within the range that would be considered normal
my blood only had about 6 micrograms of mercury per liter
So, this means that whatever I'm doing
It's not resulting in me being poisoned by the heavy metals
It actually kind of surprised me how low the levels actually were
because I dip my hands in liquid mercury all the time
but, after thinking about it a little bit
the results do sort of make sense
I don't actually dip my hand in mercury everyday
and
I actually don't eat a lot of tuna fish
in fact I don't really even remember the last time I had a tuna fish sandwich
that means that my exposure to mercury is very low
and I do take some precautions when i'm working with mercury
you know, I always do it in a well ventilated area
and when I'm working with mercury compounds
which actually can absorb through the skin
then I put on some gloves
also, the test that was done would not actually reveal
the amount of mercury that is like inside of my tissues
like my fat cells
and muscles
instead it was only detected what was in the intracellular space
or the blood
but since that number still wasn't very high
we have no reason to believe that I have high levels
anywhere in my body
I was actually really worried about the test results
because if the levels would have been up around
let's say fifty micrograms per liter
then I would have had to change something
and I would have shown that I wasn't being very safe
and actually getting poisoned
but since levels were only six micrograms per liter
I'm vindicated and shown that I actually
have been fairly safe
Touching liquid mercury is probably not going to give you mercury poisoning
because mercury does not absorb through the skin
very quickly, if at all
mercury does evaporate
as all liquids do
but the amount that it evaporates
it's so little
that I would have to hold a bowl
of warmed mercury next to my face for hours
before it would have any appreciable result
I'm still not saying to actually do that
but I'm saying that metallic mercury
is not nearly as dangerous as people think
So, I have here some nearly pure Carbon
now
nobody would complain about me eating this
here
because
carbon is a completely non-toxic material
it doesn't dissolve
and
my body is made up of several percent carbon
but carbon combined with nitrogen
makes Cyanide
which was used by the Nazis to kill people during world war two
Metallic mercury is completely harmless until you add something else to it
such as a nitrate group
which makes it soluble and so it can actually get in
and interact with your nervous system
without that, mercury is just like any other metal
So, I hope you guys enjoyed this little video
I'll see you next time