I feel silly asking this but are there any metal elements naturally occuring in the air?

Question

I feel silly asking this but are there any metal elements naturally occuring in the air?

Answer 1

"Naturally occuring" is kind of the trick part of the question.

Do metals exist in the air? is a better one, and the answer is yes.

Mercury is a liquid metal at room temperature, and has "vapors" that will permeate the air it's in.

However, is it possible to extract the mercury out of our air? At this time, I know of no process or research that is able to or attempting to achieve this end goal.

The naturally occuring part is sort of true and false at the same time.

Answer 2

"Naturally occuring"  is kind of the trick part of the question.

Do metals exist in the air?  is a better one, and the answer is yes.  

Mercury is a liquid metal at room temperature, and has "vapors" that will permeate the air it's in.

However, is it possible to extract the mercury out of our air?  At this time, I know of no process or research that is able to or attempting to achieve this end goal.

The naturally occuring part is sort of true and false at the same time.

Answer 3

Yes there are metals in air, but not in elemental form.  It is hard to get metals hanging around in an oxygenated atmosphere.  

There is lots of sodium ion in air as very tiny particles of sea salt.  Sea salt aerosol forms a large part of what are called cloud condensation nucleii.  Crustal dust also gets suspended, and it contains iron oxide and magnesium and calcium oxides.  Those are the four main naturally occurring metals in air.

edit:  Arghhh!  I forgot about aluminum (see below).  There is also a lot of aluminum in crustal dust.

Answer 4

aside from pollutants (which I don't count as natural), NO.

Answer 5

Many metals have vapor pressures - however, in general, the concentration in air is too low to be measured by standard techniques.

So, unless you are near a foundry or standing over a pool of mercury, you won't find metals in air.  (Note - this means you can't measure them, not that they are not there.)