Grandma, if war breaks out, how do you evacuate?

On August 2, 1988, a 15-year-old student working in Samcheok, South Korea, was diagnosed with mercury poisoning. He worked at a mercury thermometer manufacturing factory for just two months. Initially, he thought he had a common cold, but only after being admitted to Seoul National University Hospital were doctors able to diagnose him with mercury poisoning.

The student's family requested transfer out of the company, while the factory demanded proof of employment to avoid firing. Unable to provide evidence of employment, the student's family applied for transfer. However, the labor department denied the transfer request, stating that the hospital was not designated as a transfer hospital.

Only once the news reached the public did the transfer request become approved. The young student passed away a week later. Following the accident, the factory was among the "Big Five" hospitals designated as transfer hospitals, a designation that would only be changed twenty years later, in 2008, after the removal of the "businessman's gift" system.

The source element responsible for the student's death is indeed mercury, the only metal that exists as a liquid at room temperature. Yet, the true culprit behind this tragic event was the company and government that failed to protect workers. The author thinks readers should reconsider their assumptions about historical incidents.

In 2016, 20 young workers at a subcontracting company making parts for a major smartphone manufacturer began experiencing blindness. The culprit was methanol, used as a cleaning agent. While methanol is a simple organic compound used widely in industry, even in small amounts, it can cause blindness. In this case, however, the victims were unaware of the substance they were using and did not know that others were also affected.

Without a labor inspection report, the six victims might not have been connected, and the widespread methanol poisoning in the workplace might have gone unnoticed. Why was this possible? Because they were temporary workers. Their lack of employment records, constant turnover, and lack of safety and health education made them illegal temporary workers.

Even now, the real culprit is not mercury, but the stories of both mercury and carbon in the periodic table. Author Kim Myunghee, a preventive medicine specialist with long experience in social medicine, has written a book chronicling the stories of 18 chemical elements. The book is a tribute to science writer Priemo Levi, who reflected on his own life and inner self using all 21 elements.

However, Levi would also ponder the loneliness of modern man isolated by atoms, and how social isolation can lead to physical ill health, as seen in the stories of arsenic, an inert gas rarely combined with other elements. The author wonders what humanity values, and how the stories told by science can reveal both salvation and destruction, depending on what we hold dear.