17 Are Hospitalized After Playing With Mercury at School

“Some fool had it in a cup,” said sophomore Oscar Martinez, 15.

“It looked like the stuff from the movie ‘Terminator,’ ” said Oscar Castaneda, 17, a senior. “I was curious. I didn’t even know what it was.”

Apparently not many of the students at Verdugo Hills High School knew the identity of the liquid metal they were playing with and passing around school Thursday: mercury, which can be a very dangerous poison with lifelong aftereffects, especially if ingested or inhaled as a vapor.

Some 41 students were questioned after handling as much as three ounces of liquid mercury, and 17 were taken to local hospitals with such symptoms as tingling hands or headaches, Los Angeles Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphreys said.

The tests were mainly a precaution, Dr. Charles Deng said in the emergency room at Holy Cross Medical Center in Mission Hills. All the students were in good condition and were expected to be released, Humphreys said.

Luckily, the students were apparently handling pure elemental liquid mercury--the kind commonly found in thermometers--which is not as hazardous as organic mercury, said Lee Cantrell, a supervisor at the city poison information center. Organic mercury can pass through the skin, but elemental mercury does not. Elemental mercury is dangerous if heated and the fumes inhaled.

Where the mercury came from was in dispute. Some said it came from a shop class, although school officials said the district has forbidden its use since 1985.

Students were spotted passing around small marble-sized balls of the substance known as quicksilver at an assembly shortly after noon, Assistant Principal Carol Gorton said. They were also playing show-and-tell in the halls.

“They were tossing it around,” Oscar said.

Oscar Castaneda said he was heading to class when a schoolmate showed him a little ball of something that reminded him of the infinitely malleable liquid metal that formed the body of the villain in the movie “Terminator 2: Judgment Day.”

The ball put in his hand was surprisingly heavy, he said.

Teachers immediately segregated the students who had handled the liquid and called the Fire Department. A hazardous materials team arrived and cordoned off the first floor of the 2,000-student school as other students who had touched the mercury were discovered.

Susan Wong, director of the Los Angeles Unified School District’s Department of Environmental Health and Services, said the students could not have gotten the mercury from the school since it has been banned since 1985. She said the students got it from a necklace which broke, spilling out the substance.

But students said they got the material at metal shop and had been playing with it for hours, said Magdalena Montalvo, the mother of a student who was taken to a hospital.

“They should have that stuff in a secure place and not somewhere where the kids could play around with it,” said Montalvo, a Tujunga resident.

Oscar Castaneda said he felt fine when school let out at 3 p.m. But David Montalvo wasn’t so lucky. The mercury was passed to him as he sat on a bench in the auditorium. He, too, was curious.

But “afterward, my hand felt all itchy and stiff,” the 17-year-old said at the emergency room of Holy Cross. He was treated and released.

Wong said a school district team with a device to detect mercury would go through the school early today to ensure that none remained.