Mercury poisoning in humans causes incurable brain function damage and severe retardation.Gold extraction is also a highly energy-intensive industry, extracting ore from deep mines and grinding the large quantity of ore for further chemical extraction requires nearly 25 kWh of electricity per gram of gold produced. Monetary use
Gold has been widely used throughout the world as money, for efficient indirect exchange (versus barter), and to store wealth in hoards. For exchange purposes, mints produce standardized gold bullion coins, bars and other units of fixed weight and purity. The first known coins containing gold were struck in Lydia, Asia Minor, around 600 BC. The talent coin of gold in use during the periods of Grecian history both before and during the time of the life of Homer weighed between 8.42 and 8.75 grams. From an earlier preference in using silver, European economies re-established the minting of gold as coinage during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.Bills (that mature into gold coin) and gold certificates (convertible into gold coin at the issuing bank) added to the circulating stock of gold standard money in most 19th century industrial economies. In preparation for World War I the warring nations moved to fractional gold standards, inflating their currencies to finance the war effort. Post-war, the victorious countries, most notably Britain, gradually restored gold-convertibility, but international flows of gold via bills of exchange remained embargoed; international shipments were made exclusively for bilateral trades or to pay war reparations.
Websters definition of "mute", on the other hand, gives the adjectival meaning as "unable to speak", whereas one of its usages as a noun is "a person who cannot speak ... sometimes offensive".In informal American English the terms "mute" and "dumb" are sometimes used to refer to other hearing people in jest, to chide, or to invoke an image of someone who refuses to employ common sense or who is unreliable. In the past deaf-mute was used to describe deaf people who used sign language, but in modern times, the term is frequently viewed today as offensive and inaccurate. From antiquity (as noted in the Code of Hammurabi) until recent times, the terms "deaf-mute" and "deaf and dumb" were sometimes considered analogous to "stupid" by some hearing people. The simple identity of "deaf" has been embraced by the community of signing deaf people since the foundations of public deaf education in the 18th century and remains the preferred term of reference or identity for many years. Within the deaf community there are some who prefer the term "Deaf" (upper-case D) to "deaf" (lower-case) as a description of their status and identity. Jewish law
Classification as a deaf-mute has a particular importance in Jewish law. Because historically it was thought impossible to teach or communicate with them, deaf-mutes were not moral agents, and therefore were unable to own real estate, act as witnesses, or be punished for any crime. However, today when techniques for educating deaf people are known, they are no longer classed as such.