5 ms·

I'm not for panicked reporting, but in the face of the stated facts (as far as true) your comment is overly dismissive: the chemical solvent trichloroethylene

I'm not for panicked reporting, but in the face of the stated facts (as far as true) your comment is overly dismissive: the chemical solvent trichloroethylene (TCE)—common in soil and groundwater—increases the risk of developing Parkinson’s disease. The movement disorder afflicts about 1 million Americans, and is likely the fastest growing neurodegenerative disease in the world; its global prevalence has doubled in the past 25 years. It’s used today mainly in producing refrigerants and as a degreaser in heavy industry. But in the 20th century, TCE was used for many purposes, including making decaffeinated coffee, dry cleaning, carpet cleaning, and as an inhaled surgical anesthetic for children and women in labor. TCE is highly persistent in soil and groundwater; inhalation through vapor from these hidden sources is likely the prime route of exposure today. However, it’s detectable in many foods, in up to one-third of U.S. drinking water, and in breast milk, blood, and urine.

mikestew 3y ago
...and as an inhaled surgical anesthetic for children As one who went under inhaled anesthesia a dozen times or more as a child in the 70s, I can only say, "WTF?" It makes a great solvent, so let's put in anesthesia?
- DemocracyFTW2 3y ago
  as an inhaled surgical anesthetic for children and women in labor To be fair though, the restricted audience for the administration of this particular chemical would seem to indicate considerations of safety have been applied, otherwise one would expect a more general pattern. One must suspect there are many more chemicals with similarly hard-to-test-for longterm effects in daily use, note especially the so-called 'forever chemicals' (PFAS). What's more, dose / length of exposition makes a poison, so it's not possible to say in the abstract how a short but intense exposition of TCE stacks up against 24/7 exposition of low levels over the entire childhood. Meaning there's hope here. Also can you be sure it was TCE you received? I remember one general anesthesia when I was maybe 9 or so and that was pretty definitely laughing gas. It might have been the same in (some of) your case(s), too.
  - mikestew 3y ago
    Also can you be sure it was TCE you received? I remember one general anesthesia when I was maybe 9 or so and that was pretty definitely laughing gas. I'm pretty sure they don't cut you open on nitrous oxide (that and...that stuff just wasn't nitrous). Was it TCE? I don't know, nor do I really care. What's done is done, and worrying about it isn't going to change anything. My reaction is more to the fact that there were just not a lot of fucks given back then. Rivers were open sewers, lead was in gasoline even when it was known to be a bad idea, and we put solvents in children's anesthesia.
  - clort 3y ago
    I had a couple of operations as a youngster, and from my memory (could be faulty) they would speak to you while you were still on the trolley then waft some gas in front of you as you needed to breathe in. Then, when you were sedated they would get on with the business. I guess they would be able to inject you with something a bit more serious without you squirming, and transfer you to the table etc..
    - mikestew 3y ago
      LOL, that's the exact opposite of the majority of my experience in the 70s. In your case, you got the gas, then the shot. I'd get the "pre-op" shot for the mild sedation, then the gas for the main event. "Count backward from ten.", and I'd make it to about seven.
    - virtualwhys 3y ago
      Likewise, hernia operation as a small child. I remember feeling like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich being folded in half, and then the lights went out. Hopefully one-off cases don't significantly affect the chances of getting a serious neurological disorder later in life -- it seems we'll find out in the coming years...
      - KMag 3y ago
        > Hopefully one-off cases don't significantly affect the chances of getting a serious neurological disorder later in life -- it seems we'll find out in the coming years... My father and grandfather were anesthesiologists. We kind of adopted an older nurse anesthetist as a surrogate grandmother when I was a kid. She told us stories of back in the old days, sitting there with a stopwatch with one hand on the patient's wrist taking their pulse, and a dropper full of chloroform in the other hand, placing drops on a gauze mask over the patient's mouth when the pulse rate started going up. She always got significant amounts of second-hand anesthetic exposure. She said it was pretty common after a long day of work to drive home quite high from all of the chloroform exposure. I presume TCE anesthesia was similar, and nurse anesthetists likely got at least 10,000 times the lifetime exposure that you got. Granted, there can be differences due to age of exposure, and often non-linearities of exposure. However, if the risks of a single surgery under TCE anesthesia were significant, I'm pretty sure someone would have noted absurd rates of parkinson's in nurse anesthetists. Certainly, read up on the early signs of Parkinson's, and talk to your doctor if you think you might start showing symptoms, but don't get hypochondria over it. Cyclopropane as an anesthetic on the other hand... particularly with electrocautery pens... I have no idea how they were ever allowed in the same operating room, at least not without some kind of fume hood around the patient's head pulling air rapidly out of the room using a non-arcing fan.
- kens 3y ago
  > It makes a great solvent, so let's put in anesthesia? Literally, yes. The potency of an inhalation anesthetic is usually directly proportional to its lipid solubility. (Known as the Meyer-Overton correlation.) This is why solvents such as ether and chloroform were used as anesthetics and why N₂O is both an anesthetic and is dissolved in cream to form whipped cream. The mechanism of inhalation anesthetics is not completely understood but it's thought that they interact with lipids in cell membranes and disrupt stuff. The better they dissolve in lipids, the lower the concentration that is needed for anesthesia. There's a nice graph on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_general_anaesthetic_action#/media/File:The_Meyer-Overton_correlation.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_general_anaestheti...
  - mikestew 3y ago
    Well, when you put it that way...yeah, with some thought it begins to make a little sense. Because my observational evidence says that solvents in general seem to soak into human skin pretty well, so the same would easily get absorbed by whatever it is that turns the lights out. Thanks for the explanation.
  - thaumasiotes 3y ago
    > and why N₂O is both an anesthetic and is dissolved in cream to form whipped cream. Whipped cream is cream with colloidal air in it. Mostly regular atmospheric air, but any gas that is safe to eat and has no flavor would function equivalently. If the air were dissolved in the cream, it would just be cream, not whipped cream. Wikipedia says that the purpose of nitrous oxide in commercial whipped cream canisters is to be stored (dissolved) at very high pressure so that, when the pressure is released, it can whip the cream by undissolving from it. (And that the secondary purpose is that the nitrous oxide doubles as a preservative.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipped-cream_charger#Culinary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipped-cream_charger#Culinary
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
Zenst 3y ago
> including making decaffeinated coffee Whilst there are many who call decaffeinated coffee a crime against humanity, it is somewhat disconcerting that at one stage, it actually was just that.
hackernewds 3y ago
[flagged]

mikestew 3y ago

...and as an inhaled surgical anesthetic for children As one who went under inhaled anesthesia a dozen times or more as a child in the 70s, I can only say, "WTF?" It makes a great solvent, so let's put in anesthesia?

DemocracyFTW2 3y ago
as an inhaled surgical anesthetic for children and women in labor To be fair though, the restricted audience for the administration of this particular chemical would seem to indicate considerations of safety have been applied, otherwise one would expect a more general pattern. One must suspect there are many more chemicals with similarly hard-to-test-for longterm effects in daily use, note especially the so-called 'forever chemicals' (PFAS). What's more, dose / length of exposition makes a poison, so it's not possible to say in the abstract how a short but intense exposition of TCE stacks up against 24/7 exposition of low levels over the entire childhood. Meaning there's hope here. Also can you be sure it was TCE you received? I remember one general anesthesia when I was maybe 9 or so and that was pretty definitely laughing gas. It might have been the same in (some of) your case(s), too.
- mikestew 3y ago
  Also can you be sure it was TCE you received? I remember one general anesthesia when I was maybe 9 or so and that was pretty definitely laughing gas. I'm pretty sure they don't cut you open on nitrous oxide (that and...that stuff just wasn't nitrous). Was it TCE? I don't know, nor do I really care. What's done is done, and worrying about it isn't going to change anything. My reaction is more to the fact that there were just not a lot of fucks given back then. Rivers were open sewers, lead was in gasoline even when it was known to be a bad idea, and we put solvents in children's anesthesia.
- clort 3y ago
  I had a couple of operations as a youngster, and from my memory (could be faulty) they would speak to you while you were still on the trolley then waft some gas in front of you as you needed to breathe in. Then, when you were sedated they would get on with the business. I guess they would be able to inject you with something a bit more serious without you squirming, and transfer you to the table etc..
  - mikestew 3y ago
    LOL, that's the exact opposite of the majority of my experience in the 70s. In your case, you got the gas, then the shot. I'd get the "pre-op" shot for the mild sedation, then the gas for the main event. "Count backward from ten.", and I'd make it to about seven.
  - virtualwhys 3y ago
    Likewise, hernia operation as a small child. I remember feeling like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich being folded in half, and then the lights went out. Hopefully one-off cases don't significantly affect the chances of getting a serious neurological disorder later in life -- it seems we'll find out in the coming years...
    - KMag 3y ago
      > Hopefully one-off cases don't significantly affect the chances of getting a serious neurological disorder later in life -- it seems we'll find out in the coming years... My father and grandfather were anesthesiologists. We kind of adopted an older nurse anesthetist as a surrogate grandmother when I was a kid. She told us stories of back in the old days, sitting there with a stopwatch with one hand on the patient's wrist taking their pulse, and a dropper full of chloroform in the other hand, placing drops on a gauze mask over the patient's mouth when the pulse rate started going up. She always got significant amounts of second-hand anesthetic exposure. She said it was pretty common after a long day of work to drive home quite high from all of the chloroform exposure. I presume TCE anesthesia was similar, and nurse anesthetists likely got at least 10,000 times the lifetime exposure that you got. Granted, there can be differences due to age of exposure, and often non-linearities of exposure. However, if the risks of a single surgery under TCE anesthesia were significant, I'm pretty sure someone would have noted absurd rates of parkinson's in nurse anesthetists. Certainly, read up on the early signs of Parkinson's, and talk to your doctor if you think you might start showing symptoms, but don't get hypochondria over it. Cyclopropane as an anesthetic on the other hand... particularly with electrocautery pens... I have no idea how they were ever allowed in the same operating room, at least not without some kind of fume hood around the patient's head pulling air rapidly out of the room using a non-arcing fan.
kens 3y ago
> It makes a great solvent, so let's put in anesthesia? Literally, yes. The potency of an inhalation anesthetic is usually directly proportional to its lipid solubility. (Known as the Meyer-Overton correlation.) This is why solvents such as ether and chloroform were used as anesthetics and why N₂O is both an anesthetic and is dissolved in cream to form whipped cream. The mechanism of inhalation anesthetics is not completely understood but it's thought that they interact with lipids in cell membranes and disrupt stuff. The better they dissolve in lipids, the lower the concentration that is needed for anesthesia. There's a nice graph on Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_general_anaesthetic_action#/media/File:The_Meyer-Overton_correlation.png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theories_of_general_anaestheti...
- mikestew 3y ago
  Well, when you put it that way...yeah, with some thought it begins to make a little sense. Because my observational evidence says that solvents in general seem to soak into human skin pretty well, so the same would easily get absorbed by whatever it is that turns the lights out. Thanks for the explanation.
- thaumasiotes 3y ago
  > and why N₂O is both an anesthetic and is dissolved in cream to form whipped cream. Whipped cream is cream with colloidal air in it. Mostly regular atmospheric air, but any gas that is safe to eat and has no flavor would function equivalently. If the air were dissolved in the cream, it would just be cream, not whipped cream. Wikipedia says that the purpose of nitrous oxide in commercial whipped cream canisters is to be stored (dissolved) at very high pressure so that, when the pressure is released, it can whip the cream by undissolving from it. (And that the secondary purpose is that the nitrous oxide doubles as a preservative.) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipped-cream_charger#Culinary https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whipped-cream_charger#Culinary

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

Zenst 3y ago

> including making decaffeinated coffee Whilst there are many who call decaffeinated coffee a crime against humanity, it is somewhat disconcerting that at one stage, it actually was just that.

hackernewds 3y ago

[flagged]