Mystery metal, possibly Osmium?

This morning I received a phone call from a friend who claims to have found some nuggets of some kind of metal. His description is as follows and I will be given a sample for examination later on.

Colour: Grey-black
Malleability: Brittle, shatters when impacted with a hammer
Smell: Stinks like an acid (his exact words)

It was the presence of a smell that seemed strange to me. He mentioned that one of his men tried to bite a lump and his gum and tongue swelled up. I suspect osmium tetroxide, released by the heat of the hammering they did and told him to put all they had in watertight plastic bags, and flush lots of clean water to any body parts exposed to it, as a precaution. And the idiot who put it in his mouth should see a doc if there are other ill effects.

I have zero experience with osmium. Any info based on personal experiences in mining, recovery (along with separation from any Pt in the ore) and safety precautions would be much appreciated.

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http://www.thunting.com/smf/index.php/topic,26618.msg187228.html#msg187228

Wikipedia is never a reliable source of info, Gramps...but in this case, the article is correct.

Despite my initial warnings of potential toxicity, another phone call came in with a few excited voices babbling that they tried to hacksaw it, burn it with an oxy-acetylene torch and heaven knows what else. Good grief! I warned them once more and was told the guy who bit it has a sore throat now. Sometimes it's hard to deal with these natives; when over-excited, they sometimes revert to a child-like mentality and probably greed played a major role too. Since they can't take simple warnings and instructions, I wash my hands of it. Got no desire to become embroiled in a police investigation if one of them becomes maimed or dies of poisoning.

All the same if anyone has handled osmium before, I would still like to hear your experiences.

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You could do much better than reading a wiki...unfortunately it often appears at the top of google searches.

A few probable names did run thru my mind..galena was one of them, but I discounted it due to lack of malleability in that ore. If those jokers finish playing around with the stuff without anyone getting hurt or dying and actually bring me an actual sample for a better look and to do a simple SG test, everything till now is guesswork.

And my best guess so far is still osmium. I may be way wrong on this, but would rather err on the side of caution re: a possible toxicity. I do not know how acidic the rocks/soil surrounding the ore are, but keeping in mind I've sampled soils in that area that had a pH as low as 2.1, I cannot discount the possibility that the ore may have been affected by natural acidity and could release some poisonous substances. Back in 2002 I also found a few grains of native Pt in that area while analyzing a client's soil for agricultural purposes. As you may know, Os alloys with Pt, so that gives me a little bit more insight.

I also kept in mind how that certain group of people behave: pointing to the left while they actually mean to indicate to the right is NOT uncommon, and what they can describe to be green in colour can actually turn out to be brown (without colour-blindness being involved). I kid you not. In any case, if I am wrong about it being osmium, no harm can come from my cautionary warnings.

 

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		Quote:			Posted by homefire
	I have about 2lb of Uranium Samples that is full of Pyrites, Don't be expecting me to be Licking those!

I should have done a printscreen before you corrected "urinate" to "uranium"...that spoiled a perfectly good joke I was about to type about torturous kidney stones containing pyrite.

We do have hot springs here and there..yep they do emit plenty of sulfurous stuff. If and when the samples of this mystery metal reach me, I'll do the SG and post pix. Until today I had never heard of Os (but was aware of Pt)..been doing lots of research...it's a complicated process to render such ores into PGM, probably too complicated for a mere hobbyist.

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No worries...I read fluent typo...and sometimes cont speel properly too. 

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