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Mercury Spill

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Re: Mercury Spill

#281

Post by mreiland »

avar wrote: post #243
Cakez0r wrote: post #219

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

Even in that situation there's an element of avoidable "own risk" that could be priced into the premiums. Someone whose parked car gets hit by a drunk driver is more likely to: - Not park their car in a garage overnight, exposing them to various damage to the car. - Not park their car in a garage when they go downtown. - Park their car near bars or other places statistically more likely to have drunk drivers around.…

You forgot a bullet point

- not buy a house that's next door to a homeowner who rents the home to a person who is willing to drink and drive.

In case you didn't pick up on it, I'm calling your bullet points bullshit.

It's kind of like arguing over code, there's always going to be something you can nitpick as not optimal. There will always be something a person could possibly have done to prevent the issue (like committing suicide that morning), but it's a question of what's reasonable, and it is not unreasonable to expect a vehicle parked correctly in a parking spot to not be hit by another vehicle.

Re: Mercury Spill

#282

Post by cbr »

jandrese wrote: post #138
grecy wrote: post #78

A friend of mine has a "mercury blob maze" [1] where you have a little blob of mercury trapped in a plastic container and you have to get it through the maze - it was fun to use at different temperatures, as the blob would want to break apart when hot, or not move at all when cold. Shaking it turns it into 300 blobs. Upon seeing it, my science teacher dad had some cool stories about playing with Mercury 20-30 years a…

Elemental Mercury isn't especially dangerous though. People freak out over the word "Mercury" but forms like that aren't bioavailable for the most part and are reasonably safe. I wouldn't go breathing the fumes for extended periods of time, but holding a pool in your hand in science class isn't going to kill you. That's why it's a bit frustrating to read stories like this where the cleanup crew goes overboard and rac…

Breathing the fumes for an extended period of time? That's exactly what we would have had without the remediation.

Re: Mercury Spill

#283

Post by logingone »

rbobby wrote: post #268
vermontdevil wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No shit. What's the point of buying insurance then? I had septic tank back flow into my basement due to a design defect that was put in PRIOR to my purchase of the house. Insurance paid up then dropped me. Second insurance doubled the premium stating I'm a high risk. I was like WTF? This was a design defect that has been fixed. It's not like I'm a slob and let the house fall apart. It's a relatively new house. What's…

The underlying problem is that insurance companies are allowed to segment their customer base by risk. For low risk customers this is great because they get a cheap rate. For the companies it's great because they get to advertise a cheap rate and attract customers (and run really lean administratively... don't need a lot of claims handlers etc). Things go off the rails though for customers perceived as high risk. Gro…

Isn't the problem that the government, which is supposed to uphold justice, let's it go on?

Re: Mercury Spill

#284

Post by cbr »

sirseal wrote: post #197
cbr wrote: post #58

Author here: happy to answer questions.

Thanks for writing this up! How'd you pay for this? Did you have to take out a loan? Did the companies have a payment schedule?

We had to prepay before they would do the work, $2.5k at a time. They've probably been burned before by people who can't pay, and I can see why they would avoid that.

We live well below our means so we can donate more, so we did have some savings.

Re: Mercury Spill

#285

Post by cbr »

fiatmoney wrote: post #67
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…

"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.

This is actually what we did: $5k deductible, filed for this once it was clear it would be well over $5k. But we missed a step: check the policy before you file to confirm that the policy actually does list coverage for the loss.

Re: Mercury Spill

#286

Post by witty_username »

NamTaf wrote: post #125
prodmerc wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(3) clean it up with a dustpan :-D Seriously, mercury is not dangerous unless inhaled or ingested. Suit up with a cheap hazmat and gloves and clean away...

This is all I'd do. Shit inside walls is likely never going to be disturbed, so a face mask + gloves + dustpan and brush would get me through cleaning up the spill. But then again, I have a generally lax regard for life and limb. The way I figure it, my drinking, obesity and other vices probably erode my life expectancy more than a single controlled exposure to mercury.

Well, that's the wrong logic. Exposure to mercury is bad and your other health problems will compound this. (Comorbidity).

Re: Mercury Spill

#287

Post by jl6 »

cortesoft wrote: post #188
danieltillett wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would think so too, but I would not be surprised if there is some sort of industry wide collusion to not try and change the situation. The key is separating out the risks that are truly higher from those that are not. If they are applying this as a blanket policy on all claimants it suggests that collusion is the culprit.

Or it suggests that the extra work needed to differentiate between the truly higher risks and those who are not is cost prohibitive. It may be more cost effective to just stick with the blanket policy.

This is exactly the reason. Big-name insurers trade in volume business. The more they standardize the product, the cheaper they can sell it - not a whole lot different to any other industry. That's not to say they don't attempt to have sophisticated pricing models that ingest all kinds of underwriting data points, but there are costs to that complexity too.

There is a broad market in specialist insurance which caters to the non-volume cases. It just costs more because you have to expend more effort-per-sale (and of course because non-volume also tends to mean that the risks genuinely are higher - e.g. homeowners with prior subsidence claims).

Re: Mercury Spill

#288

Post by cbr »

davidcollantes wrote: post #246

When I was a child, me and my nephews (which are about my own age) used to go to the pharmacy to buy thermometers, and break them for their mercury. With time we accumulated enough to fill up a mid-sized crystal jar, I would say around 200 grams. We played with that mercury a lot. We passed it between our hands, which later held treats we ate. We laid down on the grown, and pour it in our closed eyes, letting it drop…

    No harm ever came to us as a result.
I think you're probably right, but how do you know? It's very hard to compare yourself to a version of you who didn't have that kind of exposure as a kid.

Re: Mercury Spill

#289

Post by cbr »

spacecowboy_lon wrote: post #251

Do American house buyers not have a survey done. In the UK its a requirement of a Mortgage application.

We did have a home inspection, but the only way to find this would have been to rip up the floor or bring in a mercury vapor analyzer, neither of which are customary (in the US or UK).
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