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Because of its mercury content, cinnabar can be toxic to human beings. Overexposure to mercury, mercury poisoning (mercurialism), was seen as an occupational disease to the ancient Romans. Though people in ancient South America often used cinnabar for art, or processed it into refined mercury (as a means to gild silver and gold to objects), the ...
Outside of Chinese cultural contexts, English elixir poisoning usually refers to accidental contamination, such as the 1937 elixir sulfanilamide mass poisoning in the United States. Dān 丹 "cinnabar; vermillion; elixir; alchemy" is the keyword for Chinese immortality elixirs.
Mercury poisoning is a type of metal poisoning due to exposure to mercury. [3] Symptoms depend upon the type, dose, method, and duration of exposure. [ 3 ] [ 4 ] They may include muscle weakness , poor coordination, numbness in the hands and feet , skin rashes, anxiety, memory problems, trouble speaking, trouble hearing, or trouble seeing. [ 1 ]
red cinnabar (α-HgS, trigonal, hP6, P3221) is the form in which mercury is most commonly found in nature. Cinnabar has rhombohedral crystal system. Crystals of red are optically active. This is caused by the Hg-S helices in the structure. [5] black metacinnabar (β-HgS) is less common in nature and adopts the zinc blende crystal structure (T 2 ...
Other ingredients are highly toxic. Cinnabar is the ore for mercury. Realgar, orpiment, and arsenolite contain arsenic – but magnetite removes arsenic from water. The element Fluorine is highly reactive and poisonous, but its calcium salt, the mineral fluorite, is not. Aconitum species are numbered among the world's most toxic plants.
Because of the high toxicity of mercury, both the mining of cinnabar and refining for mercury are hazardous and historic causes of mercury poisoning. [51] In China, prison labor was used by a private mining company as recently as the 1950s to develop new cinnabar mines.
Cinnabar has been used in Traditional Chinese medicine as a sedative for more than 2000 years, and has been shown to have sedative and toxic effects in mice. [111] In addition to being used for insomnia, cinnabar is thought to be effective for cold sores, sore throat, and some skin infections. [112]
The term cinnabar is used in mineralogy and crystallography for the red crystalline form of mercury sulfide HgS. Thus, the natural mineral pigment is called "cinnabar", and its synthetic form is called "vermilion" from red lead .