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This past week, the Centers for Disease Control released a report on a 59-year-old Iowa man who became acutely ill retrieving precious metals from scrap computer components. He had been trying out a variety of ad hoc techniques for home refining, and ended up in an intensive care unit after attempting to extract gold using liquid mercury heated in a frying pan on his kitchen stove.
The hapless Iowan spent the next 4 weeks in a hospital suffering from severe injury to his lungs, a condition known as Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. He survived to be discharged to a chronic care facility, still requiring oxygen supplementation. The clinical scenario was typical of what happens when exceedingly high levels of mercury fumes are inhaled. This substance is extremely toxic to the lungs under such circumstances. It is only at lower, more sustained exposures that mercury takes it major toll on the human nervous system and spares the lungs.
Unfortunately, the Iowan is only one in a very long string of similar cases that have occurred over the years. His was somewhat unusual in that he lived alone. Often there are multiple victims. One of the largest and most tragic outbreaks was documented in a 2000. A family of eight from the Central Valley of California was poisoned when the father processed gold ore at home. The two youngest of six children were in the kitchen with the parents while the mercury cooked: the 6-week-old infant survived (as did the siblings who were in another room), but the 13-month-old and the mother did not .
The intervening years, if anything, have only served to make home metal refining something of a growth cottage industry. In the past, it was gold ore extraction that held allure, but nowadays spent electronics call out to the reckless recycler. Not only that, internet resources offer copious how-to advice on ill-conceived schemes to make a fast buck off precious commodities, absent adequate warnings that the scavenger’s health (and that of anyone else in the vicinity) is the most precious item exchanged in the deal. According to the CDC report, the man in Iowa not only obtained the mercury he used on the internet but noted that there are 12,000 web-linked videos extolling the virtues of home-extraction of valuable metals from computer parts and, when it comes to mercury, 200,000 website describing its use in gold reclamation.
Nor is mercury the only self-help/self-harm trick of the makeshift metal recycling trade. Various potent acids also come in handy. The Iowa case included sulfuric, hydrochloric, and nitric acid. Nitric acid is a particularly bad player because when it interacts with certain metals, for example copper (which can be abundant in electronic components) it reacts to release nitrogen dioxide gas. Inhaled at sufficient concentrations, nitrogen dioxide, like mercury, also causes potentially lethal Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome. Exposures of this sort have even occurred from the overly enthusiastic cleaning of copper pennies, a syndrome coined, if you will, “Numismatist’s Pneumonitis.” Indeed, it is not completely clear whether toxic nitrogen dioxide exposure also may have played a role in the Iowa case.
Back in 2010, the Boulder Colorado Daily Camera ran an “Inews” story on the subject of electronic waste metal extraction, including its potential hazards. One of the former recyclers interviewed reported that “he learned how to do it online. He stopped, he says, when he realized it was potentially dangerous, and he couldn't make money from it.” It seems that the invisible hand of the free market may protect, as long as it doesn’t suffocate you first.
