The posting essentially says there is no risk than tosses out mercury and lead vapors which don’t exist in a HDD. Then it talks about the lead in solder. You’d have to vigorously rub and handle the solder on circuit boards to get any amount on your skin worth worrying about and then you just wash your hands. That risk is true of all boards that don’t use low or lead free solder. The whole comment is very hypothetical.

If your hard drive has dust it would’ve failed a long time ago. They are designed to be extremely clean. The head is like a 747 flying an inch above the ground. It sounds like an urban myth to scare people.

I used to collect AOL cds. I had a stack a few feet high. I was going to make some sort of artwork out of them.