Why mercury is forbidden aboard airplanes

Guess I'd better leave my fillings behind next time I fly.<p>(Side: Why is it that so many people go "ooh it's neurotoxic!" and when I mention fillings they say "oh but that's <i>different</i>, it's a stable form of mercury mixed with {arsenic, radium, cyanide, other weird thing I don't really want embedded in my flesh}?)

We also should be careful with Macbook Pros especially the unibody ones...

Chemistry is fascinating. I'm really not too worried about mercury being the next terrorist secret weapon. It doesn't seem flasy enough to inspire terror, maybe just a creeping unease.

So if you're Al Queda, the play here seems obvious. Get as many sleeper agents in the U.S. as possible (which I'm sure they're constantly working on) and each day send a couple on a plane armed with an old thermometer. How many could you take down before people realized what was going on? And after they did, how much damage would it do to the economy when nobody flew anymore?<p>I sure hope I'm missing some secret reason why this wouldn't work well.

&#60;irony&#62;I'm glad we have a 100ml limit on liquids to be carried on airplanes&#60;/irony&#62;

This is really scary stuff (and I was hoping that it would never make it on HN). I heard from an aeronautical engineer once that if one drop of mercury somehow gets let loose in an airplane that the whole plane needs to be basically taken apart (and possibly scrapped).<p>Mercury by itself is very toxic. There was a custodian who broke a thermometer in our office building once. That would have been ok - had she not spread it everwhere by playing with it. And, speaking from experience, as someone who broke a thermometer as a kid in his room and was <i>mesmerized</i> by the liquid, I can't blame them. Whole building had to be detox'd - almost spaceman suit E.T. style.

This effect can be beneficial. Swap the mercury for gallium and you get a neat way of producing hydrogen on demand: <a href="http://cleantech.com/news/1205/gallium-and-aluminum-tigers-in-your-ta" rel="nofollow">http://cleantech.com/news/1205/gallium-and-aluminum-tigers-i...</a><p>Too heavy for aviation but potentially useful for fuel cell vehicles.

This makes me think of mercury as the Ice-9 of aluminum. Does anyone have videos of this reaction?

So, those old-style thermometers with mercury - even that much mercury could shred an airplane?<p>I know knowledge is power and all that, but I almost wish I hadn't found out about this.

"The few-micron-thick layer of aluminum oxide is the only thing holding an airplane together."<p>Jees.

Or, you know, because it's toxic?

Clicking on the link to the article crashes the browser on my tmobile g1 for some reason, anyone else?