Cinnabar content. To produce liquid mercury (quicksilver), crushed cinnabar ore is roasted in rotary furnaces. Pure mercury separates from sulfur in this process and easily evaporates. A condensing column is used to collect the liquid metal, which is most often shipped in iron flasks. Associated modern precautions for use and handling of cinnabar arise from the toxicity of the mercury component, which was recognized as early as in ancient Rome. Because of its mercury content, cinnabar can be toxic to human beings. Though people in ancient South America often used cinnabar for art, or processed it into refined mercury (as a
Broken Hill ore deposit hornblende schists. The ore consists of massive, recrystallised sphalerite-rich, galena-sphalerite and galena-rich sulfide lenses in folded horizons, known as No. 2 Lens Formation and No.3 Lens Formation. Both have distinctive metal ratios and gangue minerals. The ore boundaries are parallel to the bedding planes. According to Gustafson, "There is evidence that the ore has been introduced into an old, already folded, rock and has replaced certain favourable layers of that rock, particle by particle, with large tonnages of garnet, rhodonite, fluorite, marmatite (and wurtzite), galena, and other minerals that constitute the orebodies." The Potosi-Footwall Gneiss is found on both sides