Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Mercury Spill

jefftk.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

211–220 of 374 posts

Re: Mercury Spill

#211

Post by 001sky »

thaumaturgy wrote: post #55
cbr wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A shopvac (or any vacuum not designed for mercury) would be a really bad idea: they vaporize the mercury and seriously distribute it around the house.

I agree with you both, but that doesn't change that I suspect this would be the default approach for a lot of people that have neither the money nor the ideology to justify a professional cleanup. An easy example of this kind of thinking is that people used to (and many still do) bury used motor oil in their yard. (See e.g. http://www.experienceproject.com/question-answer/How-Can-I-D... )

There are alot of dangerous polutants out there, and around the home, but run-of-the-mill motor oil is not really one of them.

http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/1991-04-28/old-motor-oil...

Re: Mercury Spill

#212

Post by encoderer »

dump100 wrote: post #141
fiatmoney wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Because of this, I avoid making any claims unless absolutely required." This is economically efficient behavior - and in fact you should set your deductible to the highest amount you can afford out-of-pocket, as insurance is really only efficient for amounts above that. You should be aiming towards insuring catastrophic loss - eg, a fire that burns your whole house down.

Insurance in my understanding is good for catastrophic events. If house burning down happen in 1 of 10000 homes in a lifetime, and all have taken insurance. For a small sum, you have ensured that you'll not be homeless, instead of each 10000 owners saving enough for a new house.

You don't need to be fully self insured. I have my auto insurance deductible at $1k. So I'm self-insuring up to $1k of damage.

Re: Mercury Spill

#213

Post by encoderer »

Spooky23 wrote: post #82
nostromo wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Insurance is such a scam. A friend of mine made two claims within about five years: once for water damage and once for a burglary. The insurance company agreed that she was covered. So they paid her and then dropped her. No big deal, right? Wrong. Once you've made a claim or two against your insurance, it can be very hard to get any new insurance company to cover you. She finally did find a new insurer, but the price…

The bigger scam is that getting the insurance claim denied will probably still either raise his rates or drop him altogether. This is a pretty extreme case of a household hazmat issue. 99/100 times, the pragmatic answer is to maintain deniability, make it as safe as possible and get out if necessary.

So, sweep it under the rug and sell the house without disclosure? That is a hell of a liability you open yourself to. Even if I felt pretty clever about eluding that responsibility, I'd rather roll the dice on the hazmat costs than take that hit to my self-respect.

Re: Mercury Spill

#214

Post by keithpeter »

venomsnake wrote: post #200
brianpan wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They have a 1.5 year-old that undoubtably puts everything in his/her mouth. Even the CDC factsheet says the impact of low levels of exposure is unknown. And we're not talking about the milligrams in a CFL bulb, a speck of mercury. This was cups of mercury.

You can drink mercury and nothing bad will happen. It is the vapors that hurt you. A lot. A toddler breathing mercury vapors is bad idea. Of course bucket of sulfur will go a long way towards cleaning this up.

I was thinking 'drop yellow sulfur over the floor' as I read the first paragraph and when the fire officers arrived. As I read the rest of the article and found the section that describes the source and progress of the spill, I realised that a more radical cleanup would be needed.

I'm in my late 50s and we used to use mercury liberally at school and after. I'm talking half a gallon of the stuff to demostrate the Toricelli vacuum, and later at University for floating bearings. Always dirty on surface, so low vapour. Bucket of sulfur in the lab. I'm not recommending a return to those days (benzene, carbon-tet, acetone on tap &c).

Re: Mercury Spill

#215

Post by hliyan »

Xorlev wrote: post #118
mingabunga wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeha, I'm a bit dumbfounded about the calling of the fire dept, the reaction and so on. I would have just figured out where it was coming from and cleaned it up myself with some gloves and a dustpan.

And if you miss any, your young daughter is going to find it. Seriously isn't something you want to mess with.

This happened to me when I was about 9, when I didn't know what mercury was. There was a few droplets on the floor and I ended up poking it with my index finger for a few minutes. To this day I don't know what the medical effects were.

Re: Mercury Spill

#216

Post by imjustsaying »

hyperbovine wrote: post #99
chimeracoder wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She finally did find a new insurer, but the price has gone way up -- negating her original claims. This isn't a scam at all. That's exactly what you'd expect from insurance. Insurance isn't there to save you money. In fact, the expected value of an insurance plan is always going to be negative on an infinite time horizon[0]. The whole point of an insurance plan is to smooth risk : instead of the small possibility o…

What? The point of insurance is to pool risk . The expected value of insurance is not automatically negative. Look up the term "actuarially fair". Yes, there is moral hazard in insurance and it is sometimes necessary to exclude bad actors to prevent markets from unraveling, but to not to the extent which has become common in many sectors. Your whole post reads like an specious apology for bad behavior in the insuranc…

Right, the risk is pooled, the funds are pooled.

But everyone seems to forget that there's a huge part of that pool taken by the things sitting in the insurance office's chairs.

Re: Mercury Spill

#217

Post by imjustsaying »

tadfisher wrote: post #173
ekianjo wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> What's the point of buying insurance then Unfortunately, just like for many things, government makes it mandatory to buy insurance for many of your properties. So the scam can go on and on forever.

Which government requires insurance on a private home? Mortgage lenders make homeowner's insurance a condition of the loan to protect their assets. I've never heard of a state requirement for homeowner's insurance. I'm in the US, though. Might be different elsewhere.

It also makes sense that a bank would require a homeowner to have insurance. The bank gets all the benefits and the homeowner takes all the risks, in the form of payment costs and CLUE report liability.

Re: Mercury Spill

#218

Post by atmosx »

ccvannorman wrote: post #14

It may have cost you $50,000 but you now have +50 karma on HN and rising. Some would say a bargain! ;-] In all seriousness, cool story, glad you're okay, and this makes me think "insurance" as a business needs to be re-thought entirely. How many times has it happened that insurance companies weasel out of paying? Objectively you might think THAT was their primary job.

> How many times has it happened that insurance companies weasel out of paying?

That's the business model for insurance companies. They try to make you think that you're covered when in reality you're not.

Re: Mercury Spill

#219

Post by Cakez0r »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #147
chimeracoder wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> She finally did find a new insurer, but the price has gone way up -- negating her original claims. This isn't a scam at all. That's exactly what you'd expect from insurance. Insurance isn't there to save you money. In fact, the expected value of an insurance plan is always going to be negative on an infinite time horizon[0]. The whole point of an insurance plan is to smooth risk : instead of the small possibility o…

"In your friend's case, the fact that she had two claims adjusted her relative risk profile" For car insurance it makes sense, as the risk is specific to the driver, so the number of claims tells you something about the insured's driving. But, for home insurance, isn't it mainly about the property rather than the individual? And isn't that mostly about location and property type? Will this continue to affect her prem…

> For car insurance it makes sense, as the risk is specific to the driver, so the number of claims tells you something about the insured's driving.

Not necessarily. One of my friends had his parked car hit by a drunk driver while he was not in it. His insurance premiums still went up after claiming for the damage.

Post reply on HN