No, there are *NO* demonstrable side errects. There are inuendo and sensational scare tactics aimed at the usual luddites. No science at all.
Another luddite speaks. I suppose you've had all tha amalgum fillings removed from your teeth too.
Nor has it been proven 100% safe.
Also little kids are more suscpetible to lead poisoning since they have lower threshold.
Perhaps I wasn't clear. By mercury I meant mercury compounds since we had been referring to a mercury compound. Does that help, or do you say no mercury compound has any severe effect on children or adults?
Sorry but more susceptible and lower threshold mean the same thing. Kids are more susceptible because their systems are developing and lead interferes with the development.
Well this is a bit fuzzy in the science part. Water chemistry is and can be complex. Water as it turns out, is a great solvent, and dissolves a little bit of darn near anything.
The truth is, well yes some lead could still come out into solution. But in reality (and probability) if left undisturbed, 50 year old solder even it still has lead in situ, has likely leached out all mobile lead that could come out into solution. You'd probably have to deliberately and aggressively chemically attack the solder to get lead into solution.
NEW LEAD solder (is not marketed today) would leach some out. Old solder, left alone and undisturbed, will not likely leach additional lead.
Also (depends on your geographic location, source of the water etc) but many/most water supplies have large amounts of limestone (calcium carbonate ie hard water) in solution. This often forms over time, a protective coating patina of calcium carbonate (lime coating) over all the insides of the pipes and joints. In this case it is an additional protective coating sealing lead contaminates.
Odds are 50 year old solder is likely safe (low risk) if left undisturbed.
====== Lead trivia (some historical)
Lead is a poison that does accumulate in the body and does cause damage, and yes young children are more susceptible to this.
Some clays do leach lead into acidic solutions. That is why certain clays are used for the final firing glaze, they don't leach lead. There was a documented case 1980s or so of a physician eventually diagnosed with lead poisoning. He loved to drink cola soft drinks daily, from clay cups made by his son, and unknown at the time were improperly glazed with the wrong clays, ie lead poisoning as determined by later analysis.
The rich Romans 2000+ years ago could afford lead drinking cups. The advantage over cheap copper cups (used by lower classes as affordable to them) was the favored drink of the day, wines, chemically caused copper salts in the copper cups. Lead did not do this and did not "spoil" the taste of the wine as copper cups did. What they did not know, was lead did leach into the acidic wine. What was worse they liked to heat the wine which enhanced lead solubility. All this might explain why the aristocracy of Rome eventually faced downfall, dementia among the privileged class due to lead poisoning! The Romans also used lead pipes and lead containing clays for pipes for plumbing. Who knows?
The Royal Navy physician (prior to 1800s or so) who did the definitive work on Scurvy (vitamin C deficiency ) came up with the solution to provide fruit and fruit juices to the Royal Navy (hence the term limey) for long sea voyages. But he stored the juices long term in lead lined wooden casks! Acidic solutions (fruit juices) leach lead. His remarkable scientific work (for that day and age) to solve scurvy essentially exposed all navy personnel to lead poisoning. This may explain bizarre navy incidents like Mutiny on the Bounty! Eccentric behavior? Lead poisoning? Who knows?
Some (many?) USA modern cites water systems still have lead water main pipes in their older underground distribution pipes. They last a very long time (>100 years) and don't corrode. And from exhaustive testing of these water systems, no unsafe lead levels were ever found (most not even detectible lead).
I still use real 50/50 solder on sweat copper. That lead free stuff sucks.
No, I'm saying that the mercury (compound and quantity) used to preserve vaccinations has not been shown to cause any adverse side effects. The Autism "links" aren't (correlation causation). Until recently (and it's not a given now) there wasn't a better preservative for vaccines. The anti-mercury crowd tends to greatly overlap the anti-vaccination crowd, anti-fluoride, anti-*, sky-is- falling crowd, i.e. luddites.
Mercury, in general, has been overrated as a health danger (what hasn't?).
Well, it _was_ quite a long time ago - it is, after all, why it was one of the plagues.
Some very bright person noticed that if you took a sample of the pus from the boils of someone infected with smallpox (yes, really), and then scratched someone's skin with it, _most_ of them survived the result and didn't catch small pox again.
As in "most" - 5 out of 6.
The success/failure rate was pretty well understood at the time - despite it being quite a while ago, because smallpox was running rather rampant at the time, and the effects are knowable pretty quickly.
Obviously, a 1 in 6 failure rate isn't very good.
Sometime later, another person - Edward Jenner was his name - discovered a similar thing about cowpox - it transfers to humans, is quite mild, and often infers an immunity to smallpox. That was about 200 years ago.
Seemed surprising to me too. But "1 in 6" was a quote from a medical report or some such many years ago as the probability an unvaccinated child had of catching the disease by age 12, and that diptheria cases in children under 12 are much more serious than in adults.
[And in fact, I apparently _did_ catch it before I was 12 ;-)]
That was rather my point. So we agree ;-)
According to Edwin Pawlowski :
Can you come up with _anything_ that has been proven 100% safe?
Hint: not even water is.
Of course not, but where do you start to take precautions? 99%? 70%? You have to weigh the risks and rewards. As kids, we used to play with mercury and make shiny pennies. That does not mean I'd inject it into a baby.
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