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As a chemist, my most horrifying compound is Dimethylmercury. It readily passes through protective latex and PVC. Consider Karen Wetterhahn. She spilled a coupl
by j_m_b 11y ago
As a chemist, my most horrifying compound is Dimethylmercury. It readily passes through protective latex and PVC. Consider Karen Wetterhahn. She spilled a couple of drops onto her gloves, quickly cleaned it up but still ended up dying a rather gruesome death where she persisted for weeks in a state that shifted from comatose to highly agitated before she passed. This was preceded by nearly a year of abdominal pain, weight loss and mental decline. Just a little bit will kill you in a slow, agonizing death and your gloves won't even save you!
- chucksmash 11y agoNew England Journal of Medicine write up of this case: http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199806043382305 http://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199806043382305
- monochromatic 11y agoGood write up, I'd only read the wikipedia summary. That stuff is terrifying.
- Gibbon1 11y agoWhat's weird is the metal and inorganic salts of mercury aren't particularly toxic. The vapor is toxic, one of my college professors said his graduate adviser was suffering from years of exposure to mercury fumes because in the bad old days they used to seal the gas valves in the lab with a little pool of mercury. Poor guy spent 40 years in the lab breathing mercury fumes.
- Laforet 11y agoApparently it was commonly used in home plumbing as well, argh. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10357115 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10357115
- CamperBob2 11y agoInteresting thread on Reddit along these lines, as well: https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/3vfam4/update_mystery_mercury_bulb_in_the_castle_attic_i/ https://www.reddit.com/r/whatisthisthing/comments/3vfam4/upd...
- cafard 11y agoSo the expression "mad as a hatter"--mercury was used in part of the hat-making process.
- LeifCarrotson 11y agoIf you can spend 40 years in a lab breathing mercury fumes, maybe it isn't as dangerous as the public perceives it to be? I mean sure, let's stop sealing gas valves with it, a space should be built to be safe to work in for 40 years. But let's not freak out about perorming a couple experiments with it, using a mercury-bulb switch in a thermostat, or the few milliliters released by a broken CFL bulb.
- mixmastamyk 11y agoMercury is all-natural after all.
- refurb 11y agoWhat's weird is the metal and inorganic salts of mercury aren't particularly toxic. It's not too weird if you think about their physical properties. Metallic mercury - not that reactive or soluble in water; in fact eating metallic mercury is not that dangerous, it tends to just pass through your body Mercury salts - Mercury(II) salts are water soluble, but Hg(II) reacts with thiols pretty rapidly (it's chelated by them). That includes all of the sulfur containing amino acids in your body (cysteine and methionine). The problem is it will also bind to important enzymes. Hg(II) salts with trash your kidneys, but don't make it into the brain. Organic mercury - fat soluble, can penetrate most membranes of the body; that means it gets into the brain and through metabolic transformation results in neuron death
- gsteinb88 11y agoOn a related note, Derek also covered dimethyl cadmium, which was new to me at the time: http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2013/05/08/things_i_wont_work_with_dimethylcadmium http://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2013/05/08/thi...