Thallium
Thallium
When given the list of the minerals available to research for our first project, there weren’t many options left since I had missed the first day and of course I was in the last table to get the sign up sheet. I wondered why among all the options available, no one had chosen thallium, an element that seemed so mysterious to me. It was an easy decision, and maybe it sounds nerdy, but I was genuinely curious about what this metal really was.
Unlike most of the other minerals my fellow classmates have researched for the past couple of weeks, thallium, atomic number 81 on the periodic table of elements, is not found freely in nature. Thallium was accidentally produced from the removal of selenium from sludge left over from the production of sulfuric acid. The man responsible was an English chemist, Sir William Crookes in 1861. He thought he was going to find tellurium, but instead discovered a new element- thallium. The metal was named for its green line, Greek “thallos” for green twig. (“It’s Elemental”)
In an article I read by the Center of Disease Control, the domestic production of thallium ended in 1981, but in the past it had been produced from the residuals from the smelting of zinc, copper, and lead ores through electrolysis, precipitation, and reduction. Nowadays it is procured from reserves or is imported from countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom. (“Toxicological Profile for Thallium”)
Up until 2005 there had been no discovery or reports of thallium deposits in the natural world, since it is a byproduct in the mining of gold, lead, zinc, copper, mercury, and arsenic that had been stumbled upon in a lab by Sir William Crookes. The Xiangquan deposit in eastern China was the very first example of a thallium-only deposit. In this deposit we have discovered that thallium occurs in pyrite, lorandite, and hutchinsonite. (Zhou)
As a metal, pure thallium has no use since it quickly turns into a powdery
When given the list of the minerals available to research for our first project, there weren’t many options left since I had missed the first day and of course I was in the last table to get the sign up sheet. I wondered why among all the options available, no one had chosen thallium, an element that seemed so mysterious to me. It was an easy decision, and maybe it sounds nerdy, but I was genuinely curious about what this metal really was.
Unlike most of the other minerals my fellow classmates have researched for the past couple of weeks, thallium, atomic number 81 on the periodic table of elements, is not found freely in nature. Thallium was accidentally produced from the removal of selenium from sludge left over from the production of sulfuric acid. The man responsible was an English chemist, Sir William Crookes in 1861. He thought he was going to find tellurium, but instead discovered a new element- thallium. The metal was named for its green line, Greek “thallos” for green twig. (“It’s Elemental”)
In an article I read by the Center of Disease Control, the domestic production of thallium ended in 1981, but in the past it had been produced from the residuals from the smelting of zinc, copper, and lead ores through electrolysis, precipitation, and reduction. Nowadays it is procured from reserves or is imported from countries such as Belgium, the Netherlands, Germany, and the United Kingdom. (“Toxicological Profile for Thallium”)
Up until 2005 there had been no discovery or reports of thallium deposits in the natural world, since it is a byproduct in the mining of gold, lead, zinc, copper, mercury, and arsenic that had been stumbled upon in a lab by Sir William Crookes. The Xiangquan deposit in eastern China was the very first example of a thallium-only deposit. In this deposit we have discovered that thallium occurs in pyrite, lorandite, and hutchinsonite. (Zhou)
As a metal, pure thallium has no use since it quickly turns into a powdery
Cited: "It 's Elemental - The Element Thallium." Science Education at Jefferson Lab. N.p., n.d. Web. 16 Apr. 2013. <http://education.jlab.org/itselemental/ele081.html>. "Thallium Poisoning." British medical journal 306.6891 (1993): 1527-. ProQuest. Web. 18 Apr. 2013. United States. Center for Disease Control. Toxicological Profile for Thallium. Washington, GPO.: , 1992. Web. Zhou, T. F., et al. "A Preliminary Geological and Geochemical Study of the Xiangquan Thallium Deposit, Eastern China: The World 's First Thallium-Only Mine." Mineralogy and Petrology 85.3-4 (2005): 243-51. ProQuest. Web. 18 Apr. 2013.