Hi hitheeaetn
Folks! This note was posted by a high school student commenting on the story of the school that allowed two students to fry Ferrari red because they weren’t carrying a doctor’s prescription for non-prescription sunblock. But maybe that school loses to this one, in the sticklers department. – L.
Dear Free-Range Kids: This reminds me of a ‘chemical spill’ my school had a couple months back. Keep in mind this is a high school, with around 800 14-18 year olds walking the halls.
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We were told to evacuate because of a ‘chemical spill’ in one of the science labs a bit before noon. Now, there were some actual dangerous chemicals in some of the rooms, so we evacuated without complaint. Soon, we found out what the ‘chemical spill’ was: mercury. Someone had dropped an old thermometer made of mercury, so the entire school had to be evacuated.
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We had to sit out on the football field for four hours. There were no clouds to block the sun, it was actually fairly chilly out, and about half the school hadn’t had a chance to eat lunch. No one was allowed to leave to stadium, even to grab a sweatshirt that was sitting ten feet away in their car.
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They had to test everyone who had been inside that room that day for traces of mercury. Two hours later, they all came up negative. I got a mild sunburn from that day, which I’m pretty sure was a bigger cancer risk than a bit of mercury.
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Also, since I nearly failed chemistry, I asked my homeroom teacher (who happened to be a science teacher) if the mercury was really that bad for us. He said no, mercury is usually only harmful if ingested. So my entire school was kept out on a lawn freezing our hungry butts off and getting sunburned not only for two hours of our school day, but two hours AFTER school had ended, to ensure no one was licking the mercury off the floor.
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In all, 100 kids got tested — really just their clothes and shoes — or about one eighth of the school. The school is Totino-Grace high school located in Fridley, Minnesota. Here’s a piece about it that ran on KARE 11.
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On a side note, the school did away with the glass and mercury thermometers a couple years ago, but I guess they missed a few. – A Student
48 Comments
“No one was allowed to leave to stadium, even to grab a sweatshirt that was sitting ten feet away in their car.”
So why not just go anyway? Sure you might have been given detention or suspension, but that’s better than catching a cold or a sunburn. Put your comfort before some arbitrary school rule.
My high school chemistry teacher told us that the reason hatters were called “mad hatters” back in the day was because of mercury. They used to pour mercury into the hats to evenly round them out. With all of the time spent around the mercury, some of the hatters eventually went insane because of the exposure.
Granted, I don’t actually know how true this is, but even if it is, we’re talking about people who were exposed to far greater amounts of mercury than what would be in a thermometer, and over a longer period of time. This does seem like an overreaction from the school given the small amount of mercury and the small number of students actually exposed.
Why not just quarantine the students who were actually in the room? I think of all the chemicals that were spilled when I was in high school chemistry and no one so much as batted an eye. How did we survive?!
There’s a certain irony using Madame Curie who died due long term exposure to radiation due to improper safety precautions because there wasn’t enough understanding of the risks involved.
That one actually isn’t the school’s fault, they’re following government regulations to prevent contamination of water sources. See http://www.epa.gov/hg/spills/index.htm
If one kid had gone to grab a sweatshirt from their car or sit in their car, they all would have followed. What were they going to do? Suspend the whole school? Funny – I’m reminded of the time I accidentally bit a mercury thermometer in half while getting my temperature taken in the principal’s office circa 1981. “Oh no!” she said and helped me get the pieces out. That was the extent of that. Haven’t gone mad yet!
Crazy! There were quite a few chemicals spilled in my high school chemistry class, just like in Sarah’s. We never had to evacuate our classroom because somebody spilled something. If we did, then we would have spent every Friday (which was experiment/lab day) being evacuated from class; and we would never have been able to perform any experiments.
I have a Mercury Thermometer, and it will be taken from me when “they” pry it out of my cold dead hands. Ever notice that since the scare tactics of thermometers, actual temp. dont seem to matter? I’ve changed pediatricians 4 times in the 2 yrs since my beloved Doc passed, and ALL of them say things like “actual temperature isn’t important, go by how the child is behaving.” now- while I agree that a fever is sometimes a good thing, the body’s way of fighting things off, there are times when you NEED to know if its coming down. Like when My 2 yr old spiked a 104, and ten min later after some Tylenol, a 104.3. the Dr. we had at the time actually told me it was probably the thermometer, and to wait and see. when I replied that it was a Mercury Thermometer, and therefore accurate and consistent, suddenly he wants us to go to the E.R. (we already were in the car BTW) since then, I’ve found almost every single health practitioner I’ve spoken to also has a hidden Mercury Thermometer, tho they don’t admit it until I mention mine. not really on topic, except it illustrates how fear mongering trumps functionality every time.
There’s probably more mercury on any cheap jewelry or toys these kids bought from Walmart or a Dollar Store.
They’ve already been exposed. They are wearing the mercury.
kadeira, the link you posted indicates that when a thermometer is broken, one should:
“Have everyone else leave the area; don’t let anyone walk through the mercury on their way out. Make sure all pets are removed from the area. Open all windows and doors to the outside; shut all doors to other parts of the house.”
That means everyone but the person cleaning it up should leave the room, not evacuate the entire building. It also says “Mercury can be cleaned up easily from the following surfaces: wood, linoleum, tile and any similarly smooth surfaces.” I’m sure the lab did, in fact, have linoleum or tile flooring. Who would put a carpet in a chem lab?
When my kiddo bit through a mercury thermometer, poison control was not concerned with any that he might have ingested, but was more concerned on proper cleanup, and walked me through the steps to properly clean up and dispose of it.
I can’t recall a single student in my school ever complaining about missing class for any reason whatsoever. The stupider the better (and before the grammar police attack, I am well aware that “stupider” is not a word; I just don’t care). Getting evacuated from school was fun. It meant authorized hanging out with your friends instead sitting in class. Except the time after school, I’m not sure where the problem with this is. Yes, it is completely idiotic but who cares when you’re 16 and getting to chill for a couple hours instead of worrying about calculus and the battles of the civil war.
When I was about 8, I broke mercury thermometer in the bathroom sink. The little silver mercury balls were hard to pick up or wash down the sink. I did manage to get a couple in my hand, and they were fascinating, the way they broke up into smaller balls. I remember a couple were stuck in the metal ring around the drain for a couple weeks, until I guess my mom noticed and did something about it.
Now, I know this wasn’t a good thing, and I wouldn’t want my kids doing the same thing. But I’m 37 now and healthy as a horse, despite my mercury exposure and lack of medical treatment for it. Because of this experience, the sheer panic people have now over the possibility of a tiny bit of mercury has been a little baffling to me. I suspect we’re exposed to more dangerous things regularly and we aren’t even aware (airport scanners come to mind!).
Chemistry teacher here. A well-equipped lab should have a spill kit capable of containing mercury spills. Every lab I’ve ever worked in has one.
If you didn’t have one, a bottle of powdered sulfur is sprinkled on the contaminated area and the waste swept into a bottle which can then be disposed of safely. The brief exposure to Hg vapor you get during this time is probably less than you’d get from eating a swordfish steak.
This response is beyond absurd.
@ Donna,
The “-er suffix was legitimately used to augment the adjective –the arbitrary cries and decrees of the severely anal-retentive notwithstanding. “Stupider” therefore is a word. It’s such anal-retentiveness that feeds the hysterical compliance with real and imagined regulation. The use of the word “stupider” means you are one of the saner people in this world.
If you want an example of an improper word, examine the word “incentiviize”. I could easily start ranting.
To all others on this board, please forgive this act of digression from the main topic.
The Highwayman.
A friend of mine is a high school teacher. A couple years ago a student spilled mercury (I don’t remember the circumstances). The whole school was not evacuated. The class was quarantined and tested. Students who were to use that room for subsequent classes were diverted to the library for impromptu study hall. For most of the students the day went on as usual with the addition of something new to discuss in between classes. Sadly, it still made the news.
Wow, times have changed since the 80s, when our science teacher would break open a thermometer and let us all touch the mercury and play with it a little, to observe its properties! 😀
I recall a similar story a few years back, in the DC metro area local news. Seems a thermometer dropped in a school hallway while classes were in session. Instead of having everyone stay put or simply closing that segment of hallway, the whole school was evacuated. In the subsequent testing, the shoes of several students turned up contaminated. Since the accident happened while the students were in class, and the evacuation was called promptly. It sure sounded like the contamination occurred because of the evacuation.
There really is no substitute for thinking problems through.
The bad thing is that these sorts of experiences and reactions brand science as “dangerous” and “arcane”. They stem from ignorance of science, and promote ignorance of science….
How many kids will be discouraged from taking chemistry next year because of this? How much fear mongering will go on, promoting more science ignorance?
We already have a deficit in scientific, logical thinking (thus this site). We need measured responses, not knee-jerk overreactions.
As someone who really celebrates clarity, fun and communication, I really enjoyed this letter. It encourages me that anyone leaving high school these days could write a letter like this. Bravo!!
It never ceases to amaze me how skittish my ex-husband is about our kids, perceived “dangers” and “safety” (though I must admit he is definitely improving in this vein! Hallelujah!!) given the stories he told me about his childhood growing up in the 60s and 70s. In one anecdote, he told of some classmates at his private high school who stole pure sodium from the chemistry lab and had a plan to drop it into the school’s olympic-sized swimming pool!
The authorities were alerted when the sodium went missing, and the boys went fleeing from arrest— to the Mississippi River, where they hurriedly dumped the sodium over a bridge into the water. The explosion was so enormous, it nearly capsized a barge downriver. My husband says the barge captain got on his megaphone and said, “What have you boys got over there?”
My husband’s take on the story is how great it was that they didn’t thrown the sodium in the pool, since it probably would have destroyed it, and caused some deaths to the people nearby. But he thought it was all hilarious.
Only one story from a childhood marked by discharged 45-caliber service revolvers, near misses with other firearms, tragically misused nitrous oxide, loss of limb and life in the most exasperating, foreseeable ways… fast-forward thirty years, and he won’t let his kids walk in an idyllic neighbourhood to get to school a few blocks away!
Before I actually read the article, I was wondering if someone might have spilled some dihydrogen monoxide. 🙂
Yes, there was a petition started up on the web a few years ago gaining signatures for the banning of the “dangerous chemical” dihydrogen monooxide, and it was incredible how may millions of people signed it with comments about how they couldn’t see why the government hadn’t already due to the high number of deaths it causes every year LOL
I remember private high school getting evacuated one day due to walnut sized hunk of potassium, and a bucket of water. The year 13s were testing how reactivity increases as you go down the periodic table. From that year on we were only allowed to watch as the chem teacher dropped them in 🙁
I remember biting the end of a thermometer off when I was a kid. My dad freaked out (just a little) and I had no idea why at the time. But we continued to use the thermometers (digital ones were just becoming popular and cheap enough for us poor people to buy back then). I’m sure my dad still has a bunch of mercury thermometers in his house. I have 1 digital one somewhere but I rarely use it. I just feel the kid’s head.
As for the evacuation… sounds like major overkill. I’m sure stuff like that happened all the time when I was in high school. I never took chem so I have no idea. Sometimes I’m surprised they even allow chemistry lab anymore as “safety conscious” as people are today.
Oh, and to whoever was talking about high schoolers loving to get out of class for whatever reason… I remember when I was a freshman I was in my strings class last period listening to a lecture about something or other. Our class was held in an old gym on the side of the school that was rarely used (across the hall were the chem labs and the only other classrooms were English ones around the corner). Because the student parking lot was right outside the gym a lot of upper classman would cut through the gym to get out when they didn’t have a last period class.
In the middle of the lecture some girls went through and next thing we know the fire alarm went off. So we all went outside and I’ll tell you it was NOT fun. It was raining and about 40 degrees and we were stuck standing there in the freezing rain (It was Catholic school so we were all in skirts and we weren’t allowed to carry jackets) for 30 minutes while the fire dept. figured out it was a false alarm. Then the principal was so irate she made us all stay after school for 40 minutes until someone confessed. Of course the culprits had left already.
They did eventually figure out who did it and they were in all sorts of trouble from the school and fire department (that’s like a $2500 fine per kid).
Whats really annoying is the culture of liability which has led schools and other institutions to have to take these ridiculous actions.
1. Digital thermometers are now more reliable and accurate than mercury ones. “They’ll take it from my cold dead hands!” is your own business, but honestly, it’s like refusing to give up your horse and buggy.
2. Behavior IS more important in most cases than temperature, especially since human body temperature is variable.
3. What would Madame Curie do? Kinda a bad caption, since what she’d do is work 16 hours a day, avoid human contact as much as possible, and die of radiation poisoning. Woman was brilliant, but not a good model of a healthy work/life balance or overwrought safety protocol (or, um, any safety protocol).
A similar thing happened at a school a little ways from here. The noon news had an announcement (with much panic) that the high school in a particular town was closed and locked down because of a mercury spill and it, too, was a thermometer. We used to play with mercury when we were in high school. By the way, my younger sister bit the end off a thermometer and swalled the mercury (this was in the earlly 60’s) and our family doctor said no big deal. She is now in her 50’s and seems to have survived.
I believe the inside of an Etch a Sketch is made of mercury. I broke mine when I was little, all over the living room. Cleanup nightmare for my mom, but we’re all still standing 40 years later!
So we have a national mindset to always assume the worst, coupled with the fact that very few of the people involved in making law and regulations have any science or technical background (hey, the medevial french lit grads have to go somewhere).
Same for education administrators; so we get these silly stories. By the way, in the late ’50s one of the standard early lab sessions was to heat mercuric oxide to produce metallic mercury….no fume hoods, and we all survived. Physics labs of the era almost all contained mercury barometers, containing relatively large quantities of mercury, and we all survived that also.
When you’re focused on risk with no ability to quantify you wind up with this kind of garbage.
Isn’t mercury one of the key components of the new florescent light bulbs? I have had two of them suddenly burst into flame in my hall way…maybe I should have called a hazmat team.
When I really wanted to call one was when the electric company, being oh so nice, gave me a box of bulbs. It was pretty expensive. But they put it over the fence, where my giant puppy was. So when I got home I found he had ripped open the box and crunched almost every one of them….in my yard. It was after 5, I could not get any information from anyone, including the vet. I ended up cleaning it all up, and because it was hazardous material, when I went in to put on the record that I had a dog and NOTHING should be left inside the gate….I gave them the bag to dispose of. Honestly, I am still concerned about it. Because I am pretty sure I didn’t get every shard of glass and I worry that kids or animal will get cut.
My dog, as far as I can tell, has not suffered. Hopefully he was like a former President and didn’t inhale.
We’re going through this with asbestos at work right now. The asbestos regs are unbeliveable – similar to mercury but worse…. We need to send each and every chip of asbestos to a hazmat landfill, where they have to log it and map it for eternity. Never mind that asbestos cement (which is what we deal with) is pretty much just that – cement. It’s inert unless you grind it into power and snort it up your nose. But you should not do that with portland cement either.
I remember school in the 70s – we’d play with mercury in physics class. I don’t remember any particular precautions; we didn’t even worry too much if mercury got lost in the cracks in the floor….
@CrazyCatLady: The amount of mercury in modern bulbs is minimal. On the order of a hanful of molecules. Air the place out, and don’t eat the carpets, and you’ll be fine.
Wow, talk about overkill.
When it happened at my school nobody panicked. The teacher explained any dangers, cleaned it up, made sure the student wasn’t injured or had any mercury on them and carried on with the class.
Seriously, any science/chemistry teacher should be knowledgeable enough and have the resources to handle this situation (or any number of minor incidents). And if they aren’t…well that’s a different problem.
So I’m guessing the experiment we did in physics where we turned mercury solid by freezing it with liquid nitrogen would not go over well at this school?
What about breaking a CFL lightbulb? They contain mercury. Just a trace, but more (I’m pretty sure) than your exposure to mercury from a broken thermometer IN ANOTHER ROOM IN A LARGE SCHOOL.
I’m the student this happened to, and yes, for the record, the floor of the science room was linoleum. I have no clue why they had to bring the fire department in to clean in.
Honestly, every one of us wanted to leave. It wasn’t that terrible at first, (we were bored, yes, but hey, I got out of a test.) but after they school day ended and we were STILL there, people were angry. There were a number of students who had to delay plans or call in sick to work. It was a mess.
Eventually, some guy stood up and theorized we were actually all selected as tributes in the Hunger Games and this was our arena. He actually made a break for the fence screaming ‘I’M KATNISS EVERDEEN!” Our librarian chased him down.
I suspect that sometimes local authorities view mercury spills as a chance for their crews to practise dealing with a chemical spill. So it could be that everybody in charge knew that this was ‘silly’ but this might be there only chance to run through their procedures in a real life situation.
AFAIK mercury is dangerous to inhale (vapor), not so much to ingest.
Agree with Donna – while I really enjoyed reading such a well-written letter from a high schooler, I am amazed that anyone this age would worry about a break in routine. My son’s high school was evacuated due to a ‘bomb’ scare, and it was the most fun he and his mates had that year (the bomb, of course, turned out to be a bored 6th former’s artwork, that he’d taken to PE and left on a shelf, wandering off after class without it). Of course, they weren’t made to sit around for too long, the teachers giving up and telling them to go home after noting that half of them had wandered off anyway. These kids the O.P. was with must be particularly well-behaved.
Or maybe our high schoolers are just particularly naughty….:-).
Digital thermometers are only accurate so long as they are calibrated. And I can assure you the majority of them are not frequently calibrated.
This same thing happened recently in the Birmingham area. Schools was closed down for about 6 days. Granted, it was a vial, not just a thermometer, but it was overkill to the max. Kids had to bring cloths in to destroy, etc.
http://blog.al.com/spotnews/2012/03/birminghams_putnam_middle_scho_2.html
They used mercury in Terminator 2 when the melted bad terminator reassembled itself.
We used to have mercury in science class and asbestos covered surfaces in art class for working with jewelry torches. My dad used to melt lead in an iron ladle. Most hazardous substances need to be ingested to cause harm. Last week’s alarmist news was of lead levels in ladies purses which is something that isn’t chewed on. Arsenic occurs naturally in some fruits, salt contains sodium and chlorine.
More people go mad from zero tolerance than from mercury poisoning these days.
“Agree with Donna — while I really enjoyed reading such a well-written letter from a high schooler, I am amazed that anyone this age would worry about a break in routine.”
Doesn’t the fact that the letter says that they were hungry and cold and getting sunburned lessen your amazement? The OP also chimes in just above to explain that it messed up people’s after school work and other plans. Probably blasted some sports practices, too.
Sure, no high schooler minds a “break in routine” when well fed on a mild, pleasant day and it’s only school that’s disrupted. But this caused physical discomfort and disrupted non-school life *for no good reason,* so while it’s not the end of the world, it’s hardly surprising that some kids would find that pretty annoying.
Yes, the new lightbulbs have mercury in them. And you’re not supposed to throw them away in your regular garbage – there are specified drop-off points for your used lightbulb (our closest one is at Home Depot). But I was in the midst of moving a dresser (to clean behind it) and didn’t realize there was a bulb on it, which of course fell and broke. My husband went online and looked up the clean-up steps. They involved picking up the spilt mercury with tape and opening a window to let out all the vapors (which threw me – I’m not sure how many vapors that small of an amount of mercury could give off, but whatever). Anyway, that was two years ago, and we’re all still standing. Even the cat. I also broke a mercury thermometer once and cleaned it up as best I could without telling anyone because I didn’t want to get in trouble. That was 15 years ago, and I have to assume I did far more damage to my body for smoking from ages 16-29 than I did spilling and cleaning up mercury without a hazmat suit.
Something similar happened in my highschool, in the way of being kept outside for a long period of time (no ‘chemical spill’, some bogus spirit day thing). After about 2 hours, some of us just got up and went for lunch, and as I recall some of those that left didn’t even come back. I was told the whole thing was about 4 hours long. Some teachers “tried” to stop us, but didn’t make a stink when we kept going. No detention. We were seniors at the time.
But that is pretty ridiculous. For educators, they are pretty dumb. Mercury is only dangerous when ingested. Or if you decide to take a bath in it. The amount of mercury that came from the thermometer is so negligible, you can just wipe it up and throw the paper towel in the trash. This was totally waaaaay overboard. Teachers should have known better. One has to wonder their level of qualification as educators. Being a teacher isn’t just about book smarts, it’s also about teaching common sense and logic.
Two points:
1) I used to work to remove mercury from classrooms, to avoid this exact situation. Fact: mercury fumes are dangerous to inhale. Mercury evaporates at room temp, and the fumes are dangerous. Other commenters mention the mad hatter, and yes, that title was because of neuro-damage from exposure to mercury vapors over time. (The tough part when mercury spills is finding all the droplets – it scatters and sinks into holes/crevices)- in order to avoid any chronic exposure to fumes.
2) That being said, what should have been done was: 1) evacuate the room/lab where it spilled, 2) open windows or turn up the A/C (warmer air = more evaporation), and 3) have professionals clean and test the air. Evacuating the entire school was, as EricS puts it, waaaaay overboard!
1. Digital thermometers are now more reliable and accurate than mercury ones. “They’ll take it from my cold dead hands!” is your own business, but honestly, it’s like refusing to give up your horse and buggy.
only if they are calibrated properly, the batteries are fresh, the wiring is correct, they haven’t been dropped….there’s more, but you get the point. This is what my pediatrician told all “his” moms, something I’ve heard reiterated by countless nurses, AND something I’ve seen directly affect a Dr.’s behaviour, as in “his temp was 104, moving up to 104.6 within 10 min and after a tepid bath. ::Dr. looks calm, says something about high temps not being too much of a concern:: taken with a murcury thermometer::Dr. looks concerned, asks how many times I took temp, where from, what the progression was, etc., later tells me he also uses same as they are more accurate.:: you can use em all you want. its reality tho they are, in fact, unreliable.
BTW, your comparison only works if you think horse and buggys are exceedingly dangerous and should be banned.
2. Behavior IS more important in most cases than temperature, especially since human body temperature is variable.
true, which is why most of the time you just feel the kid’s head. but when it IS important, measuring it accurately VERY important. as in tracking the fever to see if medication is working, or deciding if a half hour drive to the ER is needed, or if a tepid bath is proving effective. in those cases, the accuracy is important not so much because you need to know what it is but what its DOING. an electric will give you six different readings every time. try it and see. a Mercury, not so much. if I can get a fever to go down a degree, I can get a handle on it. if its climbing no matter what, I need a professional right away.
I must confess that I’ve taken my horse’s temperature more often than my daughter’s, but I also think the mercury thermometers are more accurate than digital. If you use 3 different digitals one after the other, you get 3 different readings, especially I think given the circumstances under which we store thermometers for use in animals. Last year my daughter broke my thermometer in the stables. It caused major pandemonium and I spent an hour sweeping. This was on a dirt floor with hay scattered around and getting dark, so I frankly couldn’t even see a single droplet of mercury. I swept the entire area several times, put what I swept up in a bag and made sure that it wouldn’t be fed to any animal. And that was that. Subsequently reading up on it showed me just how ridiculous people were about the whole thing, after all our stables is so open plan you’re practically outside with good airflow.
After this incident I asked my doctor about it as he also still uses a mercury thermometer. He looked quite guilty and said he should probably switch to digital, but several months later when we visited again I saw that he still has the trusted mercury one.
I used to play with Mercury when I was in Junior High. A student brought a bottle of it to school and sold some to me that half-filled a pill bottle. I’d pour it into my hand and roll it around, or coat dimes with it. I knew the fumes were considered poisonous, etc. But nobody was concerned about Mercury Danger back then. I’m still not.
Seriously, most people probably have more mercury in their mouths a la “silver” fillings than they would have been exposed to in a classroom with mercury thermometers, even broken ones. People don’t make any sense…
I’m afraid you are all wrong on this one, the school wasn’t following special kid procedures they were following HAZWOPER procedures. I checked my ERG to be sure. It calls for a 50 meter evac, and SCBA that’s a level 2 PPE cleanup by certified hazmat. Maybe you should contact an industrial hygienist before you blog about chemical spills. They followed the guidelines industry uses.
When I was a kid I borrowed a thermometer from school to use in my science fair project. I accidentally broke it IN MY BED sitting there with all my stuff I leaned on it and it broke. I was afraid my parents would be mad so I didn’t tell them. So far, I’m 42 and OK. Guess it’s because I didn’t lick the bed.