Mercury is used primarily for the manufacture of industrial chemicals or for electrical and electronic applications. It is used in some thermometers, especially ones which are used to measure high temperatures. A still increasing amount is used as gaseous mercury in fluorescent lamps, while most of the other applications are slowly phased out due to health and safety regulations, and is in some applications replaced with less toxic but considerably more expensive Galinstan alloy. Mercury and its compounds have been used in medicine, although they are much less common today than they once were, now that the toxic effects of mercury and its compounds are more widely understood. It is still used as an ingredient in dental amalgams. In the late 20th century the largest use of mercury was in the mercury cell process (also called the Castner-Kellner process) in the production of chlorine and caustic soda.
