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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;afantiques, post: 18259, member: 25&quot;]<i>Mercury was often used in mass produced electronics (for soldering, circuitry, etc</i></p><p><br /></p><p>I cannot think of any circuitry or soldering application that would use mercury. The most common applications would be mercury rectifiers (which tend to be huge), and micro-switches which have a tilting mercury tube to make or break contact. Now obsolete, there were also mercury button cell batteries.</p><p><br /></p><p>We used to play with mercury at school, and scavenge it where possible to sell as scrap. I think a pound of mercury would fetch me about a pound in money.</p><p><br /></p><p>I have one one occasion had to &#039;firegild&#039; a clock case when the mercury filled compensating pendulum had a broken tube that had leaked mercury all over the inside of the gilt brass case. The only way to get rid of it was to bake it off, leaving the gilding behind, but I made sure the vapour, the dangerous part,(along with the few organo-mercury compounds, see Minimata disease) was vented well downwind.</p><p><br /></p><p>My point was that they label things as mercury free when no one with a smidgen of science would expect any mercury anyway.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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