Liquid mercury maze game-spillage about 20 years ago mine leaked & I played with it in hands longterm effect?
You’ve got nothing to worry about. Although mercury vapour is very toxic, the amount you would have breathed in while playing with it for 20 minutes is so tiny that it would not have any noticeable effect. The sort of people who ARE at risk from breathing in mercury vapour are lab tecnicians, people who work in factories where a lot of mercury is used (e.g. in the production of sodium hydroxide) and amateur gold miners who use mercury to extract gold from rocks. This is simply because the exposure to mercury vapour goes on for a very long time. Also, it is not true that the body cannot eliminate mercury. It DOES eliminate mercury, albeit at a very, very slow rate. It usually finishes up in the hair and nails, where it can do no harm. Whatever tiny amount you ingested would have been completely eliminated over a period of 6 to 12 months. On a visit to a gold-mine in Ghana in the 1960s, I noticed in the analytical lab a big crucible with about 30 kg of mercury in it. I stuck my left hand
