Effect of Mercury

Title: The health effect of mercury on human
Almost all people contain at least small amount of mercury of different forms in their living tissues, this reflects the widespread presence of mercury in the environment in different forms and people’s exposure through different ways.
1. Introduction of mercury:
Mercury occurs in various forms and can be found naturally in the environment. The synonyms are colloidal mercury, quicksilver, metallic mercury and hydragyrum. Tt is mostly found in cinnabar ore (Hgs). There are three groups of mercury: metallic elemental mercury, inorganic mercury salts and organic mercury. Different forms of mercury have different solubility, reactivity and toxicity, thus have different behavior in the environment.
At the room temperature, Mercury is the only metal which is in liquid form. Metallic elemental mercury (quicksilver, Hg0) is a shiny, sliver-white, odorless liquid.
It is one of the heavy metals, referring to any metallic chemical element that has a relatively high density and is toxic or poisonous at low concentration. But mercury rarely occurs in this uncombined form in nature. It is slightly volatile at room temperature and become more volatile after heating. Mercury slowly evaporates into air to form vapour and the amount increases as temperature rises. It can persist in the atmosphere in vapor state for over a year and can be traveled by wind. Metallic mercury is only slightly soluble in water and organic solvents. Metallic mercury is widely used in our daily life; it is used in barometers and manometers due to its high density. It is commonly used in thermometer Mercury metal can also be used in industry as a liquid electrode in the electrolysis to produce chlorine and sodium hydroxide.