>The biggest risk when handling pure mercury is from
>it evapourating, and inhaling the fumes.

I still think about the time when I was a lab boy in the physics lab during 
my last year at secondary school. One of the science teachers wanted a 
demonstration of electromagnetism in wires. She wanted to hang a couple of 
wires from test tube stands into a bowl of mercury, and run a current 
through them so that the first year students could see the wires move 
together or apart depending on the relative current direction.

So here is Yours Truly dipping wires into the mercury bath, to turn on the 
current from a 6V motor bike battery, with the only current limiting being 
the resistance of the mercury bath. As you can imagine the wire drew a spark 
on make and break, and sometimes the bottom of the suspended wires did as 
well, all creating little puffs of mercury vapour, no face mask, no fume 
cupboard, no eye protection ...

Still here 40 years later though ... 

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