If you can spend 40 years in a lab breathing mercury fumes, maybe it isn&#x27;t as dangerous as the public perceives it to be? I mean sure, let&#x27;s stop sealing gas valves with it, a space should be built to be safe to work in for 40 years. But let&#x27;s not freak out about perorming a couple experiments with it, using a mercury-bulb switch in a thermostat, or the few milliliters released by a broken CFL bulb.