The yellow house is surrounded by yellow tape, the street (near Jones and Washington) is marked off by cones, and a small gathering of Environmental Protection Agency officials, Clark County Health District officials and reporters stand around, watching a man near the house pulling on the baby-blue gloves that complete his hazmat suit. A small crew erects temporary fencing around the yard, next to the three portable potties that have been stationed there. To the side of the house, two men in hazmat uniforms sit on cushions on a tarp, one holding a tired-looking, chap-nosed dog in his lap while the other shears the hair off of the animal's hindquarters. Snowball, a 3-year-old Great Pyrenees, is a victim of mercury poisoning.
"We went out and got her some doggy biscuits," says EPA spokesman Mark Merchant. "We try to be the friendly federal agency."
A few feet away, a neighbor observes the activity, not sure what to make of it. Welch Bee, an older man who seems entertained by the hubbub next door, doesn't know much about the 17-year-old boy who'd been playing with a quart of mercury since September.
"As far as I know, he's a nice kid, real nice. He never did get in any trouble that I know of, anyway," says Bee. "Stayed home most of the time. Yeah, he's a good kid."
That good kid is now in the hospital with mercury poisoning, and his grandmother and mother, who lived in the house with him, are staying in a hotel courtesy of the Red Cross while their home is decontaminated. As of press time, there was still no word on where the boy acquired the mercury, but his grandmother told officials that she saw him playing with it in September and again in November.
"On Thanksgiving she noticed the kid was playing with it. She knew it was dangerous, she didn't know how dangerous, so she threw it out," says Merchant. "By then, the damage had been done, and enough of the mercury beads had gotten throughout the house and subsequently by her throwing it out, into the backyard, that the kid had chronic exposure to mercury vapors over a long period of time." Exposure to mercury can lead to neurological damage.
There are beads of it in the backyard, and fumes in the house, since the metal vaporizes at room temperature. The EPA is bagging up all of the resdients' belongings for testing and removing all of the carpeting, furniture, clothing and anything else mercury could cling to.
This is the second time in days that mercury has made the news. Last week, a Gardnerville middle-school student took a vial of mercury to school, and it contaminated 56 backpacks. Harry Allen, an on-scene coordinator for the EPA, says the substance is pretty easy to come by. While our search on eBay found nothing, Allen suggested chemistry labs, mines, and commercial and industrial supply companies as sources.
"It's a common occurrence," Allen says. "We had a camera here yesterday and a reporter, and the next thing you know, somebody came by saying, 'I have mercury too, can you get rid of it?'"