What do people use antimony for

Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry, Wiley, Book Google Scholar. Voyles, P. Nature , — Download references.

You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar. Correspondence to Claire Hansell. Reprints and Permissions. Hansell, C. All manner of antimony. Nature Chem 7, 88 Download citation. Published : 17 December Issue Date : January Anyone you share the following link with will be able to read this content:. Sorry, a shareable link is not currently available for this article. Provided by the Springer Nature SharedIt content-sharing initiative.

Hyperfine Interactions Advanced search. Skip to main content Thank you for visiting nature. Download PDF. Subjects History History of chemistry Inorganic chemistry. Antimony occurs naturally in the environment. But it also enters the environment through several applications by humans. Antimony is an important metal in the world economy. Annual production is about World reserves exceed 5 million tonnes. In Finland there is a deposit of elemental antimony.

Especially people that work with antimony can suffer the effects of exposure by breathing in antimony dusts. Human exposure to antimony can take place by breathing air, drinking water and eating foods that contain it, but also by skin contact with soil, water and other substances that contain it. Breathing in antimony that is bound to hydrogen in the gaseous phase, is what mainly causes the health effects.

As the exposure continues more serious health effects may occur, such as lung diseases, heart problems, diarrhea, severe vomiting and stomach ulcers. It is not known whether antimony can cause cancer or reproductive failure. Antimony is used as a medine for parasital infections, but people who have had too much of the medicine or were sensitive to it have experienced health effects in the past.

These health effects have made us more aware of the dangers of exposure to antimony. Antimony can be found in soils, waters and air in very small amounts. Antimony will mainly pollute soils. The metalloids can be found on either side of the staircase line on the right side of the periodic table with the exception of aluminum, which is not considered a metalloid. Antimony is primarily used in alloys, ceramics and glass, plastics, and flame retardant materials. Flame retardant materials do not burn with an open flame.

Instead, they smolder or do not burn at all. Compounds of antimony were known to ancient cultures. They have been found, for example, in the colored glazes used on beads, vases, and other glassware. But these compounds were not widely used until the Middle Ages when they became popular among alchemists. They thought that antimony could be used to convert lead into gold.

It was during this period that records about the properties of antimony begin to appear. The element was probably first named by Roman scholar Pliny A. The name comes from the fact that antimony does not occur alone in nature. Alchemists used secret codes to write about much of their work, so modern scholars do not know a great deal about how antimony was used. The first detailed reports about antimony were published in when French chemist Nicolas Lemery published his famous book, Treatise on Antimony.

Antimony is a silvery-white, shiny element that looks like a metal. It has a scaly surface and is hard and brittle like a non-metal. It can also be prepared as a black powder with a shiny brilliance to it.

It is a relatively soft material that can be scratched by glass. Its density is 6. Antimony is a moderately active element. It does not combine with oxygen in the air at room temperature. It also does not react with cold water or with most cold acids.

It does dissolve in some hot acids, however, and in aqua regia. Aqua regia is a mixture of hydrochloric and nitric acids. It often reacts with materials that do not react with either acid separately. Antimony is rarely found in its native as an element state. Instead, it usually occurs as a compound. The most common minerals of antimony are stibnite, tetrahedrite, bournonite, boulangerite, and jamesonite.

In most of these minerals, antimony is combined with sulfur to produce some form of antimony sulfide Sb 2 S 3. The United States produces antimony as a by-product at only one silver mine in Idaho. The abundance of antimony is estimated to be about 0.

It is more abundant than silver or mercury, but less abundant than iodine. There are two naturally occurring isotopes of antimony, antimony and antimony Isotopes are two or more forms of an element. Isotopes differ from each other according to their mass number.

The number written to the right of the element's name is the mass number. The mass number represents the number of protons plus neutrons in the nucleus of an atom of the element. The number of protons determines the element, but the number of neutrons in the atom of any one element can vary.