I have recently encountered two questions here regarding the element Mercury. Both were concerned with the physical state of Mercury at normal room conditions (temp and pressure). I worked in a laboratory where an technician spilled several ounces of the material on the floor and never reported it. I learned from that experience that I had been breathing Mercury fumes for a considerable length of time and my saving situation was that we ran air conditioners all the time.
My investigations into the material at that time indicated that Mercury can exist in two states in normal room conditions. In the commonly known liquid state, it has a surface area. The atoms of that liquid will evaporate into the air until the vapor pressure of the surrounding mercury in the air equal the evaporative force in the liquid. In the situation I had been in, with continual replenishing of clean (non Hg contaminated air) the liquid Mercury continues to evaporate until it has all changed to a gas.
To me this means that the more normal condition of Mercury at standard room conditions is as a gas and not a liquid (unless the volume is constant, small and at the capacity to prevent further transitions from liquid to gas.
My reference sources are no longer at my command and I wonder if there are those of our membership that can back me on this or provide a link to a good source of information.
I should add that in both questions, gas was given as a possible answer in addition to liquid.
Is there anything possibly that all (most?) liquids can evaporate at room conditions and that even asking if a material can exist in the single liquid state at standard conditions is the way to consider the situation? That exposure I mentioned I had was only discovered by me through inventorying the Hg on hand and finding we were about a pound short. It was then that the technician (promoted just prior to this to engineer!) admitted to the spilling. The Insurance company came in and surveyed the area's atmosphere and determined that the vapor pressure had dropped to a level which indicated that the pound of material had since all gone to gas. There was no longer tiny droplets of liquid to be found. Again, to me this indicates Hg's propensity to be gaseous and not liquid.
Any comments?

Water evaporates over time even at room temperature, yet we still consider it a liquid under such conditions. Therefore, the answer is no.

And if you really need a reference source to back this up, here's a ratty looking set of elemental phase diagrams, which shows mercury as a liquid for anything near STP.
http://www.iaea.org/inis/collection/NCLCollectionStore/_Public/07/255/7255152.pdf

Are you worried that you might have mercury poisoning? A friend of mine did get that from exposure in a laboratory so I can see why you might be concerned but if it was years ago, which it sounds like it might have been, then I suspect you would have noticed symptoms by now, either physical (tremors, twitching, pink skin, insomnia...) or mental (cognitive impairment, memory loss...). If there are symptoms or the exposure is recent, I'd get myself checked out - but that's easy for me to say, I live in a country with universal healthcare.

My friend got sent to Switzerland for two years, to inhale the clean mountain air. Well, either that or the fumes from the local chocolate factory, I can't remember which. He was twenty-five. He recovered. But his career in an esoteric branch of chemistry was over.

I think I came out of the oven with a normal crust. I was hoping though that in light of the element's ability to exist in a gaseous state at STP, using gas as a wrong answer to questions of Hg's state at STP could be prevented here. I think the information offered by Fun Trivia is some of the best around and I'd think even answers on the edge might be discouraged. My exposure was nearly 30 years ago. Sdrawkcab epyt semitemos I yhw si ti.

As to the water example, I think it is wrong for a question to ignore that water can exist in gaseous form at STP and require only liquid as an answer. Water will remain in a gaseous state (as humidity) until some action like changing the temperature or pressure occurs while it will change from the liquid state to the gaseous without any undue influences. Water is a compound and its natural tendency is that molecules in collision will knock some molecules out of solution. The reverse does not occur in normal circumstances. Mercury is an element that acts in this same watery situation. It goes readily from liquid to gas but not from gas to liquid.

Switzerland would be nice.

Nautilator, thanks for the link, but it is a PDF link and I waited hours for it to load. I think my anti-virals and firewalls are checking each text character to determine that no malware is contained. Do you have a regular web page that has the data perchance?

It's not being ignored, if you really want a detailed explanation of phase states and transitions between them, check out a physical chemistry book. There are all sorts of interesting things you can learn there far beyond solid/liquid/gas. It doesn't change the simple fact that water's phase state is liquid at room temperature. That's something that's been mapped/calculated. The same consistency should be applied to other things.

Here's the phase diagram if you need it
mercury