I was fortunate in one respect. The dentist who did my first batch of fillings when I was about 17 was lousy at his job and after a few years of chewing away on Fantales and Minties, they all popped out one by one. They gave way to another type with another potential poison in them - they were white fillings and I believe that they contained formaldehyde at the time.

Being bonded to another material in this case makes it a lot more stable. Mercury will actually cold alloy with Gold.

Mercury will actually cold alloy with Gold.

Yep, that's how they got gold out of quartz stamping batteries. When I was about ten I saw a demonstration of how it worked, right up to wringing the bejesus out of the mercury-gold amalgam to regain some of the mercury for re-use before boiling off the remainder in a ladle to make a gold nugget. With gold being at 79 and mercury at 80 on the periodic table might have something to do with why the two metals like each other.

One hears a lot of stories about the gold rushes in New South Wales and Victoria during the 1800s but they never include tales about how those that handled dangerous elements and chemicals like mercury and cyanide survived the job they did.

Two metals mercury does not amalgamate with are iron and platinum - there a few others too which I can't recall. Can remember chemists toddling around with steel bottles of mercury - a litre weighs 13.5kg, plus the bottle.

At the start of my working career, mercury spills were treated fairly casually; at the end an emergency, with the stuff carefully collected and sulphur scattered around to neutralise the rest.

I often think perceived risk was invented by the insurance companies to justify charging more. And some of the things we carry on about border on pedantic & paranoia.

Its a bit like flying, we here about almost every accident. Big bad aeroplanes with HAL the computer can kill a lot of people in one go but in a lot of goes shifting lots of people the kill rate is statistically safer than many other modes of transport.

Do note the clock I photographed is minus a radio.