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World’s 2nd deadliest poison, in an aquarium store near you
- nikcub 16y agosecond deadlist in the natural world, not overall. a person who was poisoned had an opportunity to figure 'oh i dont feel well', went to a hospital, made it to the hospital, and survived the real deadly biological systems don't even give you a chance to ask if that is a missile coming over the hill
- jameskilton 16y agoThis was explained though, he received an aerosoled version of the drug, which was a very, very small dose, and not directly into the blood stream. Dipping a spear into one of these things then poking a living animal and that being is dead, quickly.
- nikcub 16y ago> he received an aerosoled version of the drug If you are talking about threat from terrorism, then as an aerosol is the only effective way to distribute it. and if you were doing that, even something simple like Sarin is an order of magnitude stronger than this stuff the agents that were being produced during the cold war by third-world countries are again stronger than sarin and probably easy to make for a small group
- A1kmm 16y agoPalytoxin LD50 (rat, intravenous): 0.089 μg/kg according to http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19505494 http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19505494 Sarin LD50 (rat, intravenous): 39 μg/kg according to http://cbwinfo.com/Chemical/Nerve/GB.shtml http://cbwinfo.com/Chemical/Nerve/GB.shtml So the lethal dose of palytoxin is ~1/438th of the lethal dose of sarin.
- jerf 16y ago"a person who was poisoned had an opportunity to figure 'oh i dont feel well', went to a hospital, made it to the hospital, and survived" I am not sure what point you are trying to make with that sentence. That this proves it's not very toxic? We know how toxic it is. The LD-50 has been determined with some precision. What this would therefore prove was that his dose was low, which considering the suboptimal delivery method isn't that surprising.
- latch 16y agoOT: This led me to the LD-50 wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose#Examples http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose#Examples Was very interesting to see Botox requiring 2300x a smaller dose than VX.
- jrockway 16y agoa person who was poisoned had an opportunity to figure 'oh i dont feel well', went to a hospital, made it to the hospital, and survived This doesn't, specifically, mean anything about the potency of the poison. It means something about the potency and the size of the dose the guy received. There is a spectrum of possible conclusions between "huge dose and weak poison" or "tiny does and strong poison".
- scythe 16y ago>second deadlist in the natural world, not overall. The deadliest "synthetic" poison with a known toxic level is polonium-210, used in the murder of Alexander Litivenko. It comes in third to palytoxin and botulinum toxin in potency.
- masklinn 16y ago> second deadlist in the natural world, not overall. Right. Overall it's the fourth deadliest, with an L.D.50 of 300ng/kg, behind Maitotoxin (130ng/kg), Polonium 210 (10ng/kg) and Botulinum (1ng/kg). Is that supposed to make it better? > a person who was poisoned had an opportunity to figure 'oh i dont feel well', went to a hospital, made it to the hospital, and survived A person who was poisoned with a low dose of aerosolized palytoxin survived. Injected, you would not stand a chance.
- frobozz 16y ago> Is that supposed to make it better? If, by "it", you mean the accuracy of the headline, then yes. If, by "it", you mean the availability of the poison, then no. We live on the largest planet in our solar system, if you apply the appropriate qualification; just like this poison is the second deadliest, if you apply the appropriate qualification.
- burgerbrain 16y agoFear mongering much?
- pcanella 16y agoSaltwater aquarium owner here-- I own many palytoxin soft corals and have never felt any danger whatsoever; however that doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful with these guys (zoanthids, palythoa, etc). I've never cut them open or anything, so I'm safe I think :)
- bluekeybox 16y agoYou may be interested in this guy's comment (http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gj74k/man_cleans_fishtank_ends_up_poisoned_and_develops/c1nyfn6 http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gj74k/man_cleans_fi...): "I was changing out my water and as being the usual idiot I am, I didn't condition or warm the water before dumping in 5 gallons of cold water into the tank. The zoos didn't like that and started squirting a long thin streamer of black tar stuff. I scooped it out with my hands to throw it away, a few minutes later I felt light headed and about 5 or so minutes later is when it kicked in full force."
- pcanella 16y agoWOW, I've never seen anything like that happen in my tank. I actually have moved them and got slimey stuff on my hands from them (as with all corals) and just washed my hands really well afterward. Irritating them is REALLY difficult to do though, they'll live through anything. Absolute beauties though, and well worth keeping :)
- bluekeybox 16y agoNot a saltwater aquarium owner myself, but given stories like this, I personally would not want to wear anything short of a spacesuit when the time comes to clean the tank.
- muyuu 16y agoNo biggie. If you get a shot in your heart timely, you'd be fine. "If delivered immediately, vasodilators injected into the ventricle of the heart can act as an antidote." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoantharia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoantharia
- cma 16y agoIn other news, post security-check airport janitorial closets and bathrooms contain tons of unguarded ammonia and bleach containers all over the place.
- rdtsc 16y agoBut, do they contain aquariums? That is the real question ;-)
- cma 16y agoGuilty of not reading the article; I thought it was going to be about cyanide (sold for for killing algea in aquariums) being readily available for terrorist misuse (probably from reading about the 80's Tylenol/cyanide scandals).
- ojbyrne 16y agoSo it seems like there's an obvious omission in this story... what's the deadliest poison?
- scythe 16y agoPalytoxin. EDIT: Oh, the deadliest, not the second deadliest. Botulinum toxin, of course.
- saurik 16y agoThat is the second deadliest poison, not the deadliest.
- jedsmith 16y agoBotulinum, I'd guess (among natural toxins). A casual Google seems to indicate I'm right.
- sliverstorm 16y agoYup. 10x more toxic than palytoxin. And we inject it in ourselves voluntarily. Humans are such funny creatures.
- delackner 16y agoThere is a poisonous dosage of ALL chemicals. H2O among them. The question is, is there a dosage of botulism that has a therapeutic effect?
- ojbyrne 15y agoBotulinum toxin type A is known as "Botox." It has some therapeutic uses, but mostly cosmetic ones. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botulinum_toxin
- nl 16y agoMarginally related, the case of Karen Wetterhahn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn Wetterhahn, a specialist in toxic metals, was accidentally poisoned in her lab by a few drops of the toxic, colorless compound, which penetrated her protective glove... Wetterhahn recalled that she had spilled several drops of dimethylmercury from the tip of the pipette onto her latex gloved hand. Tests later showed that this can rapidly permeate different kinds of latex gloves and enter the skin within about 15 seconds
- Zaak 16y agoIIRC it took like six months to kill her though.
- nl 16y agoIt's slow acting, but close to 100% lethal, and you don't die nicely. IMHO, that's just about the most horrible combination imaginable.
- palish 16y agoDespite aggressive chelation therapy, her condition rapidly deteriorated and three weeks after first symptoms appeared she fell into a coma described by one of her former students as not being "... the kind of coma I'd expected... She was thrashing about. Her husband saw tears rolling down her face. I asked if she was in pain. The doctors said it didn't appear that her brain could even register pain." Wetterhahn died a few months later, less than a year after her initial exposure.
- birken 16y agoI worked at an aquarium store (probably one of the ones mentioned in the story) for a long time, and was a pretty experienced and dedicated reefkeeper at my peak, and I never knew this. This situation must be incredibly unlikely though because I've dealt with thousands of Zooanthids and hundreds of customers over the years I never had anything like this happen nor heard about it from anybody. However, I certainly wish I had known so I could have warned customers about the risks, because in the aquarium world Zooanthids are considered a great starter coral because they are very hardy and don't require much light.
- RK 16y agoThe advice I always see online about handling zoanthids is "always wear gloves". I've always done so, but seen plenty of people who don't. On the other hand, there are plenty of other (often hidden) things in your average reef aquarium that can potentially injure you and leave your local emergency department at a loss. People don't normally get stung by fireworms (or whatever) 5000 miles away from the tropical ocean.
- flipbrad 16y agoFrom the Wikipedia article [1]: "each gram of the offending zoanthid contained enough venom to kill at least 125 grown men" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoantharia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoantharia
- srean 16y agoTo get a scale of things I just had to find out what the weight of a typical grain of salt is. http://answers.wikia.com/wiki/How_much_does_a_grain_of_salt_weigh http://answers.wikia.com/wiki/How_much_does_a_grain_of_salt_... If one goes by the minimum value which is 0.05mg, an equivalent amount of this stuff can kill 2,500 human sized mice with 50% probability. That's potent stuff. Well, had written 'people' in place of 'human sized mice' but the LD-50 values used were those for mice, so it is only fair that I measure in "human sized mice" units.
- AndrewDucker 16y agoAlso, massive mice. Should we be keeping this stuff about in case of a Dire-Mouse invasion?
- denysonique 16y agoHmm, I think someone should update this page... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoantharia#Dangers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoantharia#Dangers In order for this toxin to be dangerous to humans, the average aquarist would need to ingest the zoanthid in sufficient quantities, or brush a recent cut over it. Average handling, propagation and aquarium maintenance is unlikely to pose any danger beyond a localized skin reaction.[citation needed] A 2010 study found toxic zoanthids in three Washington D.C. area aquarium stores.[7]