Apothecaries' system measure precious metals and stones. (The troy pound was already declared illegal for most other uses by the Weights and Measures Act of 1878.) In the US, the metric system replaced the apothecaries' system in the United States Pharmacopoeia of 1971. Apothecaries' system The apothecaries' system or apothecaries' weights and measures is a historical system of mass and volume units that were used by physicians and apothecaries for medical recipes, and also sometimes by scientists. The English version of the system is closely related to the English troy system of weights, the pound and grain being exactly the same in
Heavy metals cooling towers. Depending on their intended use as fertilisers or biocides, agrochemicals may contain heavy metals such as chromium, cobalt, nickel, copper, zinc, arsenic, cadmium, mercury, or lead. Selected heavy metals are used as catalysts in fuel processing (rhenium, for example), synthetic rubber and fibre production (bismuth), emission control devices (palladium), and in self-cleaning ovens (where cerium(IV) oxide in the walls of such ovens helps oxidise carbon-based cooking residues). In soap chemistry, heavy metals form insoluble soaps that are used in lubricating greases, paint dryers, and fungicides (apart from lithium, the alkali metals and the ammonium ion form soluble soaps).