Perhaps they overreacted...

Broken Thermometer Causes 100 to Respond to Mercury Spill

CARMEL, N.Y. (AP) - It was quite a New Year's Eve at the home of Richard Berger in Carmel - in Putnam County. Someone in the house broke a rectal thermometer and the family called 911 around 10:30 to report the small mercury spill.

Several dozen volunteers from the Carmel Fire Department responded to the house on Brookview Drive.

Fire Chief Darryl Johnson says mercury is a hazardous material that can cause stomach problems if inhaled.

Men wearing protective gear used wet sponges to clean up the puddle.

It was packaged and brought to the Carmel firehouse where the county health department will dispose of it today.

The Berger family was not hurt.

 

Glad they handled the situation before people seriously got hurt.

 

I don't want to know how they broke the rectal thermometer.

 

Yeah, you have someone break a rectal thermometer in your ass, and you're gonna want as many glove-wearing guys in the room as it will hold.

 

As a college chemistry minor and one-time lab instructor, I know that you could divide the number of people who showed up by, oh, say, about 100 and get that little mercury spill under control. Hungover college freshmen filling their science requirement have a tendency to drop mercury-filled thermometers. It takes about five minutes and a minimal amount of effort to perform this cleanup.

But God bless the Carmel volunteers. There clearly was nothing to do the other night in Carmel, N.Y.

 

Mercury is some cool shit to play with as long as you wear gloves. Looks like beads of silver water when you pour it on a desk but it isn't wet. Be careful, though. Shit will scatter into millions of tiny droplets that are next to impossible to clean up. And mercury is poisonous, of course.

 

Was Boots there?

 

Who do you think went diving head first into the anus to retrieve the other half of the thermometer?

"Hey, a piece of glass in a piece of ass! Giggity-giggity-giggity, all right!"

 

My dad once told me once that back then, they used to play with mercury at school.
He followed that by saying that this generation is filled with a bunch of pussies. :