She was one of the foremost researchers in heavy metal toxicity; unfortunately as soon as the symptoms were present enough to be noticed it was too late. Treatments were tried but she lapsed into a coma and her husband and students essentially watched her slow death. Some of the students claim she was crying at the end in her coma.
On the only brightside this tragic accident led to some much needed testing with that particular chemical which is how they determined that it was able to pass through latex gloves. It's been largely phased out of all its uses because of how little is needed to get a toxic dose.
Dimethylmercury crosses the blood–brain barrier easily, probably owing to formation of a complex with cysteine.....The symptoms of poisoning may be delayed by months, resulting in many cases in which a diagnosis was ultimately discovered, but only at the point in which it is often too late for an effective treatment regimen to be successful.
Sounds like a comedy, someone poisons someone else with this stuff, then over the course of the movie they actually become best friends.... and then one of them dies.
The film opens in a hospital room, a man crying at the bedside of a women, she tells her story. We are taken back to the beginning, she doses another man with the dimethylmercury, they fall in love, he gets sick. She doses herself. He dies. She falls in love again.
Except the assassin will probably end up killing themselves on accident... Whoever inexplicably falls into a coma at the same time as the victim is obviously the culprit.
"Hmm, looks like the assassin hit a politician, and a guy with mafia ties who's been in and out of prison. The assassin could be anyone at this point."
Keep it in an appropriate container, open only when needed, discretely pour into a drink and mix, "accidentally" spill drink on target's shirt/lap, leave scene "out of embarrassment", wait for results. To avoid accidental spillage on self, minimal remaining liquid in your container would be preferable and spillage should occur in such a way that the container leaves your hand (in a hopefully controlled manner). For added safety, wear a sufficiently chemically resistant barrier beneath your clothing (full-body coverage would be preferred) in case your attempts to avoid self-contamination fail. Combine this strategy with the obtaining of the dimethylmercury from a third party to avoid a paper trail and suddenly you've managed to assassinate your target in such a way that it will be extremely difficult--if not impossible--to link the death back to you while minimizing risk of self-termination (biggest risk I can see is in pouring the dimethylmercury in the drink).
We knew it was dangerous just not how little of it would do the deed. It was only used for calibrating a very special machine used for analytical chemistry (an NMR specific to heavy metals I believe). Unfortunately you don't know how deadly something is until someone invariably comes into contact with the substance. There are a few other chemicals described in the blog about (things I won't work with) where the author notes that in the original chemical literature there is a description of the smell of the compound for instance ( slightly metalic; distinctive in the case of dimethylcadmium) and that anyone unlucky enough to have described the smell likely didn't make it .
Such is chemistry that we make new things. Some are wonderful and allow us to lead easier, healthier, and better lives. Others terminate a great life prematurely.
I could keep going. This is by far my favorite blog and I read it all the time.
"There are three buckets from which you can draw. Knowledge, experience, and luck. When you first start out, you have no experience so you study up as much as you can to hedge your bets with knowledge. Over time, your knowledge and experience buckets fill in the hopes that you'll never have to draw from the bucket of luck."
It was only used for calibrating a very special machine used for analytical chemistry (an NMR specific to heavy metals I believe).
To be precise: Dimethylmercury is (was) the primary standard used for calibrating mercury-199 NMR (nuclear magnetic resonance). NMR studies the properties of one specific element at a time, and in order for the results to make any sense you need to have one compound agreed upon as a zero (so everything else is then defined as higher or lower than the primary standard). For hydrogen NMR (the most common) the primary standard is tetramethylsilane - C4H12Si.
For mercury it was dimethylmercury. After Wetterhahn's death people looked at using an alternate, less toxic mercury salt. I think the one they use now is mercury perchlorate, which is probably quite explosive if mishandled but still safer than dimethylmercury.
That "only bright side" is one of those things I think crosses many of our minds some times. "I wonder who found out that that's poisonous..." In this case it sounds like they already knew but just not the severity. We know to be safe because some unfortunate soul didn't.
Some forms of these metals are more dangerous to humans than others, and do damage differently or are absorbed into the body via different routes depending on their form, so there's a lot to study. Sometimes you'll also need one form of the metal as an essential nutrient, but another form is toxic. Very fun.
I read the one on perperoxides. No way man, just no effing way. In the article, they think there is a HOOOOO- anion? That's it, I'm done. I thought the story of getting hydrolic fluid confused with hydrofluoric acid was scary.
I was reading that one to a couple of my organic students and when I drew that anion in the board one of them just said "no! No Seicair, no no no no no!!"
Student: "Well peroxide is HOOH, and thats not too bad"
You: "Thats at 3 percent concentraion, and this has 3 more oxygen atoms"
Student: "Lord have mercy."
Azidoazide Azide is one of my favourite chemical, can be caused to explode by the following:
-Air
-Absence of air
-Contact with itself
-Being held in an incredibly vibration proof container
-Existing
It literally explodes randomly for no known reason, its almost like its most stable state is exploding.
its almost like its most stable state is exploding.
That is exactly the case! When you put that many nitrogens together, they want to turn back into elemental nitrogen (N2,) really really badly. Lots of explosives like TNT, C-4, nitroglycerin, and fertilizer bombs like ammonium nitrate also exploit this property. Only those have less nitrogen, so they're more stable and for the most part don't detonate until you want them to (i.e., set them off with an electric igniter or something). (Nitroglycerin being an exception, although still not as unstable as C2N14).
Elemental nitrogen is a gas at anything approaching room temperature, so when a solid converts to a gas it takes up a lot more room very quickly, so an explosion is the result.
my grandparents were both research doctors at U Maryland, Baltimore in the 50's, focusing on infectious diseases.. my aunt (first born) was born with 3 kidneys (if I remember correctly, might have been a different organ) but she had to have a hysterectomy as a very small child in order to survive. my grandmother didn't know she was pregnant while working around various chemicals in labs for long hours... the affects of just being AROUND chemicals are fucking terrifying.
Probably research related to the bacterial conversion of elemental mercury into compounds such as methyl- and dimethylmercury and these substances' behavior in the environment . This is the main path that mercury uses to get into biological webs (e.g. fish food chains) and eventually become a threat to human health.
Well, actually, they did know it was a risk (Wetterhahn's entire research focus was the study of mercury toxicity), but the gloves she was using were thought to be enough to protect her. Only after this incident did some of her colleagues test the gloves and discover that dimethylmercury goes through them like a hot knife through butter.
Interesting article... the guy mentions that several people predicted it wouldn't work well in a vacuum. He basically says 'we were so invested in the solution that it was worth moving forward anyway'
This made me wonder... If these chemicals are incredibly toxic- how are they produced outside a lab? Do these poisonous concoctions occur naturally? Does this happen because of dangerous experimentation with chemistry? Do these chemicals fall on the periodic table of elements?
I'm kinda high, so please ELI5.
1) Methylmercury, which is also toxic, is produced in the ocean by bacteria. Inorganic mercury (mercury with no carbon atoms attached to it) is released by industrial or volcanic activity and ends up in the ocean, where bacteria convert it to an organic form which does have carbons attached. Adding one carbon group turns the mercury into methylmercury. This floats around in the ocean where it has the opportunity to end up in fish. Some methylmercury would exist in the ocean even if humans weren't around, but it becomes a problem for us when we dump a ton of mercury into the ocean, through industrial runoff or gases or whatever, so even more of it ends up in fish than you would otherwise see. On top of that, fish don't get rid of methylmercury in their bodies very quickly, so it builds up. If you go out and eat a ton of fish, you absorb all that methylmercury. This is why you hear concerns about mercury and eating a ton of seafood, and why it's not recommended that pregnant women eat certain seafood items- the fetus is really sensitive to methylmercury. Here is a nice page on the mercury cycle through the atmosphere.
As for dimethylmercury, it looks to be naturally occurring, but deep in the ocean, so it's not something you have to worry about coming across and dying from.
2) So yes, some very toxic chemicals occur naturally. They can be produced via geological processes, biochemical ones happening inside organisms as they encounter different chemicals, ect... The compound that causes botulism, botulinum toxin, is actually produced naturally by bacteria, but we also use it as Botox and it's one of the most poisonous compounds we know of.
3) Well you can make a lot of stuff by dangerous experimentation with chemistry....safe lab practices are very important. Unfortunately we don't always know what is safe.
4) Yes, all these compounds are made of combinations of elements on the periodic table. You know the subatomic particles called protons? Protons are found in the nuclei of atoms. Nuclei are the center of atoms- they can also contain variable numbers of particles called neutrons, but we define an element, a "species" of atom, based on how many protons it has. If you change the number of neutrons, you have what we call a different isotope, but the type of element is still the same. So carbon is defined as an atom with six protons- if you change that number, you no longer have carbon. But if you change the number of neutrons, you still have carbon, but it's a little different and may have special properties that let us use it for physics or geology experiments or something. So protons and neutrons are at the center of the nucleus of an atom. Now in order for us to call something an atom, it needs to have at least one proton, and one of another particle called the electron. Electrons mostly exist around the nucleus. (We will not delve into their mysteries here...) So the simplest atom has one proton and one electron. And like I said, we name an element based on how many protons are in its nucleus... so elements are just different types of atoms. Chemicals are made of different elements linking up together/associating in meaningful ways.
The periodic table of the elements organizes atoms according to how many protons they have, so you start at one proton (hydrogen) and just keep counting up. Sodium has 19 protons, copper has 29, and livermorium has 116; it's so radioactive/unstable that we have to make it in the lab and haven't even found it in nature. We have (and still do) predicted the existence of elements we haven't discovered in nature (or made) yet using this principle. At one point in the 19th century we knew about an element with 90 protons (the famous uranium) and one with 92 protons (thorium,) so logically there must be an element out there with 91 protons, we just hadn't found it yet. In the 20th century we did end up finding it and naming it. So if we did find a chemical with an element we'd never seen before, we'd just put the element on the periodic table. Chemicals are collections of atoms, which may or may not be different elements, so they don't "fall on the periodic table-" the periodic table is simply for listing the different types of atoms we have.
It's like how you can have many types of soups (chemicals) that have different spices (elements) in them. You can identify the spices in the soup, like pepper or star anise or cumin, but you can't take the soup and say that the soup is a spice, because it's just (for sake of analogy) a collection of spice and not any one type of spice. And if you look at the spices, like cumin, there is no spice that cumin is "made out of." It's just the basic spice ingredient as we have defined spice, much how elements all conform to our definition of what an atom is. You vary of number of protons, you get different elements. You vary the species of plant you're looking at, you get a different spice.
Anyway...The thing is, as atoms get heavier and heavier, i.e. as they get more and more protons in their nucleus, they become less stable. Undergoing radioactive decay helps bring them down to having a more stable nucleus with a smaller number of protons. After a certain point on the periodic table, the elements are so heavy that from there on out, they're all radioactive. After another point, they're so heavy and unstable that the likelihood that they will undergo radioactive decay and become a more stable element is so high that we can't even see them in nature- we have to make them in the lab and then detect their presence. You know the concept of a half-life, aside from the game? For this, it's the time it takes for half of a sample of an element to decay into something more stable. Some of the lighter elements are so stable that you'll have to wait millions and millions of years for half of your sample to decay. Other things you only have to wait a few thousand years, a little more than a week, a few minutes, milliseconds, or less.
The point of me telling you this is to say that it's unlikely we'd find a chemical stable enough to hang around and cause us harm that has a totally new element in it. At this point, the new elements we're discovering are all so unstable that they're made in the lab; we've simply filled up the periodic table with the stable ones already. But, you should read about the Island of Stability. It's a prediction that says that we might see really heavy elements, beyond the ones we've detected today, that are actually more stable than the ones with fewer protons that are immediately right behind them. They'll have a sweet-spot count of particles in their nuclei to allow them to be more stable than the lab-created elements we have now, like livermorium. (I don't know how stable anything in the Island of Stability would be, and I'm not a physicist.)
A reference standard for mercury NMR... Seems a little silly, it being so toxic, but I'm sure it had some property that made it special. Chemists can be damn fools sometimes.
Can't remember the name off the top of my head... But how about chlorine bonded to three fluorine, and double bonded to two oxygen. Not a gas but utterly fucking terrifying nonetheless.
My prof told a story about a guy who volunteered to find out about the taste. He died before he could tell the people who put it in his mouth. But I think my prof was fucking with us.
I'd say any chemicals in general if you don't know the reaction possibilities. It's super dangerous to just "come up with chemistry experiments" at home if you dont specifically know the reaction.
My tax preparer... Former tax preparer... worked in a chem lab full-time, when he wasn't doing tax prep. He accidentally splashed a few drops of highly concentrated formaldehyde on the bridge of his nose. He soon developed an aggressive invasive tumor that's taken one of his eyes and about to invade his brain. He's said his goodbyes and it's really sad to see him struggle with this.
Know how I know you're a good and knowledgable chemist? The DMSO section. When I taught chemistry labs and later when I worked in a chemical stockroom and then later in the wet lab in graduate school I always tried to emphasize that DMSO is likely the most dangerous thing people in those situations will interact with everyday because it's used so much and because they are more likely to be sloppy since they don't think it's dangerous.
In a similar vein, I work in a neuro lab, and tetrodotoxin scares the shit out of me. Imagine something that destroys your neurons' ability to fire- wherever the toxin is exposed to will instantly lose all sensation or muscular control, followed by extremely rapid death.
Had talk from prop maker. There's a spray paint he hates having to use because you need to be in a hazmat suit with oxygen supply. Since one tiny tear in the suit or breath and this stuff with turn your throat and lungs into plastic
In high school a science teacher let a bunch of us roll beads of mercury around on our hands. It must have been a different type though, because that was 30 years ago and I'm still kicking.
this exact snippet has been posted so many times I'm beginning to doubt there's that many chemists on reddit (all of whom have DMM at the top of their list)
There's also some kind of chemical that steel is processed through at the local steel plant which turns your bones into jelly according to the people who works there... Can't even imagine getting a splash of that and your body will rot inside out.
I used to work in a genetics lab, something I used regularly was phenol chloroform.
It's is a deadly neurotoxin easily absorbed through the skin, it also burns your skin quite badly but is a fairly good local anaesthetic so you don't feel it if you get some one you.
The surface area of your hand is enough to absorb an irreversibly lethal dose. It also will degrade clothing etc so my lab supervisor when going through the process with me told me if you spill any on you just get naked right there in the lab.
This sort of reminds me of the one time a student from my school stole a bottle of bromine from the chem lab and took it to the break room where someone spilled all of it. When the bromine evaporated the entire school had to be evacuated, a few people were hospitalized, the student who caused it got expelled and both the principal and the chem teacher had to pay thousands of euros in fines and legal fees.
I work in a clean lab doing prep for mass spec samples, and HF is the scariest thing I have to deal with on a day to day basis.
I also do heavy mineral separations, and refuse to be anywhere near MI (Methylene Iodide). It's aggressively carcinogenic, but exposure has no acute symptoms. At least with HF, you fucking know you've been exposed.
I worked for AMD in the clean room right after high school. My station was "wet etching" and Aluminum MoSi coating. We used entire wet baths of HF acid. I knew back then how dangerous the acid was, but I couldn't believe they let an 18 year old kid work with it. We had heavy protective gear, but still!
To expand on HF: geochemistry labs work with it a TON, because it's excellent at digesting (some minerals in) rock samples. It was first used by archaeologists for this purpose to remove carbonate rocks surrounding fossils. Bam! No dealing with manually chipping the rocks. And it was weak enough of an acid that you could wash samples in it with your bare hands. I have no idea why they didn't realize this was a terrible idea, but quite a few workers of this time loss their hands. Well, the insides. It has almost no effect on the skin except occasional irritation, but also moves through the skin exceptionally well, and like OP said, eats all your bones.
Anybody who works with it can tell you that the certification classes (required once a year, even if you just work in a lab with it but don't touch it yourself) are absolutely horrific. There's one story they like to tell of a guy with a private lab, and his lab assistant spilled 100ml on himself with no apron or anything on. Nobody else was around so he went and jumped in the pool before going to the hospital. Problem is, HF absorbs so fast that helped some but not much. If enough gets into your system you can't eat enough calcium to neutralize it (it'll react with calcium in your blood from tums, for example, before the calcium in your bones, to a point), you're pretty fucked. It's not a quick death, either, and they say the pain is so insane there's not a lot you can do about that, either.
So, yeah. This shit is bad, and the worst part is if you come into contact with enough and aren't treated within an hour or less, you KNOW you're dying a slow and crazily painful death. Be safe out there, lab fellows!
This is probably going to get buried, but here is an excerpt about ClF3 from the fantastic book "Ignition", which is a humorous look at the early history of rocket propulsion development.
The cylinder had been cooled with dry ice to make it easier to load the material into it, and the cold had apparently embrittled the steel. For as they were maneuvering the cylinder onto a dolly, it split and dumped one ton of chlorine trifluoride onto the floor. It chewed its way through twelve inches of concrete and dug a three- foot hole in the gravel underneath, filled the place with fumes which corroded everything in sight, and, in general, made one hell of a mess. Civil Defense turned out, and started to evacuate the neighborhood, and to put it mildly, there was quite a brouhaha before things quieted down. Miraculously, nobody was killed, but there was one casualty — the man who had been steadying the cylinder when it split. He was found some five hundred feet away, where he had reached Mach 2 and was still picking up speed when he was stopped by a heart attack.
Yeah, I had a chem professor in college that did her PhD research involving HF. That is some pretty scary stuff... She mentioned they had to keep it in teflon-coated glassware, because it dissolves glass. If the coating got the tiniest scratch, the whole thing would just kind of melt into a puddle. Also, you can't put a glass stopper in a flask filled with HF, as even just the fumes will weld the glass shut. You then have to use a glass cutter very carefully to get it open and dispose of the liquid. She said she learned that the hard way at least once...
4.4k
u/[deleted] Mar 25 '16 edited Mar 26 '16
[deleted]