Out of interest in the topic, I had to look into this further. It appears the current oral LD50 in humans for nicotine is assumed to be 6.5-13 mg/kg (perhaps ev

Out of interest in the topic, I had to look into this further. It appears the current oral LD50 in humans for nicotine is assumed to be 6.5-13 mg/kg (perhaps even as low as 1 mg/kg in children). Nicotine is also said to be very readily absorbed through the skin. There is one[1] case I could find documented, from a 1933 publication of the British Medical Journal, of a patient nearly dying from spilling two 'drachms' (or roughly 1.5 tsp) of 95% nicotine on her arm. I'd say there's not enough information to be conclusive, but it's possible that nicotine could be lethal in doses absorbed through skin contact, though this seems unlikely to me given practical concentrations of nicotine solutions, and higher concentrations should be handled in a lab with proper safety equipment anyway. Ideally, pure nicotine would be labelled as the dangerous drug that it is, just as dangerous household cleaners are. [1] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2368002/pdf/brmedj07321-0034d.pdf http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2368002/pdf/brme...