JohnsonsEvilTwin wrote:gato azul wrote:@ JET
Do you have a source for your "Mercury is banned by the FIA" claim?
Or is it just hearsay, because Scarbs said so?
No offence, I´m just curious, because the published FIA rules, explicietly
say, that fluids are excempted from any limitations on materials.
There is perhaps an FIA directive, but I have no seen this in the public domain.
I dont. But I can tell you that Beryllium was banned by the FIA over its supposedly high toxicity as a substance. This goes against the fact that once the berylium had machined and was used inside the cylinder walls, it was harmless.
Now using this as a precedent, and knowing that Mercury is in fact a metal with liquid properties at room temperature, it is considerably more toxic than Beryllium.
If it is not banned, it would be banned incredibly swiftly as teams will have no trouble whatsoever fielding mercury in some exposed area just to get the substance banned. Such is the nature of F1.
So to debate its legality, I feel is a moot point.
Thanks for the answer JET.
You will find that Beryllium, along with other materials is specifically mentioned in the published version of the FIA rules.
There are many other materials banned from usage such as MMC and Mg for example, the ban is not always due to their toxicity.
I thought, after Lotus-Renault went to all this trouble to file a patent application last year for their fluid inerter, making specific mention of the possible use of Mercury, it would have been easy and straight forward, to include a §§ into the 2012 rules, if the FIA felt a need to exclude it, like they did with Beryllium.
Let´s not turn this into another pro/con Mercury debate, let´s just see what happens. But I felt that if someone make such a sure footed statement, such as "it´s banned by the FIA", I would like to see some evidence for it.
Again, no offense intended, it´s well possible that it is banned, but I have yet to see proof of it, other then Scarbs said so.
Mercury and it´s toxicity is probably along the lines of the toxicity of lead, which still get´s used in abundance in lower racing series as ballast, even that we have gone to unleaded fuel, and their existing some government guidelines about the toxicity of lead ( e.g. is banned since a while to be used as a component in paint etc.).
To see things in some context, I´m pretty sure that a large part of the population still has Mercury as part of their dental fillings, it still get´s used in fluorescent light bulbs, and to make mirrors, and it get´s used in large quantities to mine gold and silver ore.
On the other hand, there is some nasty stuff used in KERS batteries too, and I surely would not want to stand next to a KERS battery on fire or in thermal meltdown, but the FIA considers the risk as "manageable".
Yes Mercury is toxic, their is no discussion about this, but I would say, that it is on a manageable level.
If some teams use it or not as part of their solution to a problem, is a different matter, as others said, there are other means to reach the same end.
