dblum | May 20, 2010 Today, the U. S. Environmental Protection Agency announced that it would require BP to use a less toxic (and more effective) chemical dispersant than the brand used so far. I wish, I wish, I'm always wishing for these actions to sparkle with government intelligence and initiative.
But it's obvious that the EPA was responding to pressure created by media reports, starting with a first class piece of research from Greenwire and by resulting Congressional inquiries. In fact, the EPA appears to have stood passively by while BP dumped more than half a million gallons of the chemical dispersant…
dblum | May 18, 2010One of my treasured books from the 1930s is called "100,000,000 Guinea Pigs", written by a pair of consumer protection advocates named Arthur Kallet and F.J. Schlink. The book, born of a crusade to end unregulated use of industrial chemicals, is a wonderful mixture of painstaking research and angry invective.
"Let your voice be heard loudly and often against indifference, ignorance and avarice," the authors wrote in my 1935 edition (the ninth printing of the book.) "In adulteration and misrepresentation lurks a menace to your health that ought no longer be tolerated."
The 100,000,000 million…
dblum | May 16, 2010 Once upon a time - by which I mean the 19th century - people spilled the poison arsenic into their lives with free and merry hands.
Arsenic was mixed into medicines, into cosmetics, into weed killers, insecticies, rat poisons, fly papers. It was the primary ingredient in a number of well-known dyes used to color fabric, wallpaper, the artificial leaves used to decorate hats and wreaths, cardboard boxes, greeting cards, labels, candles, India rubber balls, oil paint, tin plants, Venetian blinds, carpets, soap, and even green stones set into costume jewelry.
Naturally, poisoners…
dblum | May 14, 2010Yesterday, I wrote about the problem of people drinking their Benadryl Itch-Stopping Gel instead of using it - as designed - on the skin. As I pointed out this is not a healthy choice. And, as the FDA noted in an official warning, we are always better off if we actually - duh - read product labels.
On the other hand, not everyone is a total geek label reader like, um, me. There's always going to be people who just make an assumption based on familiar Benedryl name, especially as a couple of readers pointed out yesterday, the Benadryl gel bottle does resemble the containers used for liquid…
dblum | May 13, 2010 Yesterday, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration issued a strong recommendation to citizens of this country: Stop drinking anti-itch gels. They're meant to go on your skin. People who swallow them - and the FDA has been tallying up a series of cases - tend to suffer from dizziness, hallucinations or fall unconscious.
At that point, they probably aren't too bothered by itching, of course. But I have to think there's an easier way.
Most of those who mistakenly gulped down a few squirts of gel were consumers of Benadryl Itch-Stopping Gel. They apparently assumed this was just another…
dblum | May 12, 2010 On Saturday night, about 9 p.m., a short, sharp explosion rattled one of Russia's largest coal mines, a deep maze of underground tunnels located in Siberia. About 370 miners were working at the time.
Most of them came hurrying out of mine entrances. But not all. Managers organized rescue teams and sent about 50 people back into the Raspadskaya mine to hunt for survivors - and bodies. In the best of circumstances - which would not be in the panic of an emergency, in the middle of the night - this would be a daunting task. The mine's tunnels (an estimated 200 miles worth) plunge…
dblum | May 7, 2010 Let's start with some slightly, okay, more than slightly depressing numbers: Since the devastating explosion on BP's Deepwater Horizon rig almost three weeks ago, more than 1.7 million gallons of oil have spilled into the Gulf of Mexico and more than 250,000 gallons of chemical dispersant have been sprayed onto that spill in an effort to contain the damage.
Everyone agrees that it's the enormous slick of oil that we should really worry. But in the last week, questions have also been raised about the cleaning chemicals flooding into the Gulf. Although the amount pales, as they say,…
dblum | May 7, 2010The title of this post is taken from today's opinion piece by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, which focuses on carcinogens in our daily life and our failure to regulate exposure to dangerous compounds.
Kristof's point is that we should do a better job of protecting ourselves and our environment from industrial compounds. No argument there. He goes on to say that a "proliferation of chemicals in water, foods, air and household products" is suspected as a factor in rising cancer rates. Yes, argument here.
Because, geez, water is a chemical compound (hydrogen and oxygen). And the…
dblum | May 3, 2010On July 4, 1850, U.S. President Zachary Taylor attended an Independence Day celebration where he ate well - snacking on fresh cherries and creamy milk, sampling a variety of treats pressed on him by enthusiastic well-wishers. Five days later, Taylor was dead of a severe attack of gastroenteritis.
And for decades afterward, suspicions lingered that one of those so-called well-wishers had been an assassin, had mixed arsenic into a slice of pie or dish of ice cream. A high dose of the metallic poison arsenic can also bring on severe nausea and painful stomach cramps.
Finally, in 1991, one of…
dblum | April 28, 2010One evening, in the early summer of 2008, a Colorado sheriff's deputy named Jonathan Allen came home to find that his wife had made him a "special" dinner. Waiting on the table was his favorite spicy spaghetti dish and a big leafy bowl of salad.
As he told investigators later, the salad was surprisingly bitter. But his wife told him it was a "spring mix" and he assumed it contained another of those trendy herbs that people use to liven up their greens. At least, he thought that way until he ended up in the hospital suffering from severe stomach cramps and a wildly speeding heart.
After his…
dblum | April 24, 2010The chemical symbol for the metallic element gold is Au, taken from the Latin word aurum meaning 'shining dawn'. In the Periodic Table of Elements it occupies a companionable neighborhood of other metals, tucked neatly between platinum (Pt) and mercury (Hg).
But as origin of its chemical symbol indicates, we've long found difficult to be prosaic about an element that possesses such a sunlit beauty. People have been creating ornaments of gold for more than 5,000 years; whole myths have been created about it, such as the ancient Greek tale of King Midas, who loved gold so much that he persuaded…
dblum | April 23, 2010In 16th century France, there lived a king with a beautiful and somewhat mysterious mistress. Diane de Poitiers was almost 20 years older than Henri II but she looked like one of his contemporaries. She had skin of a near porcelain white and auburn hair as fine as silk thread.
Famed for her intellect as well as her beauty, Diane was not only the king's lover but one of his closest political advisors. He even encouraged her to sign some of his official correspondence HenriDiane. After Henri died in 1559, his angry and resentful widow banished Diane from the court. She died at the age of 66…
dblum | April 21, 2010In an earlier post, I wrote about the possible copper poisoning of the great British poet and artist William Blake. The very simple lesson inherent in that story is that a strong dose of metals on a regular basis is generally bad for a person's health.
But one could argue that this is too simple a lesson. That not all metals are equally dangerous. In support of that caveat, in today's post, I'm featuring a short excerpt from my book, The Poisoner's Handbook, which concerns a human circus exhibit and a steady diet of silver nitrate:
In the chilly January of 1924, scientists at the New York…
dblum | April 17, 2010Last week, the U.S. Army announced that its excavation old chemical munitions dump - unfortunately located in one of Washington D.C.'s more elegant neighborhoods - had turned up remnants of two of the ugliest weapons developed in World War I.
By which I mean compounds used in the production of mustard gas and the arsenic-laced blistering agent Lewisite. In fact - this is my favorite part - the glassware used in Lewisite production started smoking as workers exposed it, halting the excavation for safety reasons.
The 1920s nickname for Lewisite, by the way, was "dew of death." But despite the…
dblum | April 16, 2010In the forensic laboratories of the 1920s, a chemist checking for poison could make a beaker glow with the brilliance of a gemstone. Color tests, as they were called, derived from the fact that many toxic materials turn a specific hue if exposed to the right mixture of heat, cold, acid and base. The results can be eerily beautiful: the gorgeous blue of cyanide, the crimson of carbon monoxide as it saturates blood, the peacocking green of arsenic.  A journalist, watching some tests, once compared the lab at the New York City medical examinerâs office to the glitter of Aladdinâs cave.
He…
dblum | April 12, 2010Recently, at events for my book, I sometimes find myself describing the gas carbon monoxide as a favorite poison. "It's just so efficient," I'll joke. "And I like things that work."
In an academic sense, I do respectfully admire carbon monoxide's simplicity (a carbon atom + an oxygen atom) and the way such basic chemical addition creates something so deadly. But in light of last week's mining disaster in West Virginia (the subject of two previous posts on this blog), I want to acknowledge that poisonous efficiency is mostly a formula for tragedy.
If you followed the news reports on the fiery…
dblum | April 9, 2010
The old mining term for explosive gases in coal mines is "firedamp". It seems illogical - I mean, a damp fire? - until you realize that it comes from the German word "dampf" for vapors.
There are other "damps" in mining terminology - "afterdamp", for instance, refers to the poisonous gas carbon monoxide, which tends to build up in mines after an explosion. But firedamp explicitly refers to a gas mixture rich in the flammable gas methane, which - as the recent disaster in West Virginia's Upper Branch Mine reminds us - burns like a devil's torch. Twenty-five miners were killed outright in the…
dblum | April 8, 2010
Almost 200 years ago, methane gas ignited in a coal mine in England, setting off an explosion that killed 92 miners. These were not miners as we think of them today - in the pre-child-labor-law world almost half were children, as young as eight years old.
So that one can make an argument - regarding last Thursday's methane gas explosion at the Upper Big Branch mine in West Virginia, that killed 25 adult miners and left another four so far missing - that we've made some progress in protecting children from mine disasters. Our track record in protecting adults is less impressive - that is they…
dblum | April 2, 2010A few days ago, I wrote about the lessons I'd learned while a young journalist in North Georgia on how to safely drink illegal alcohol (Moonshine Days). Probably because I had moonshine on my mind, I ended sharing stories about it with family and friends during a recent visit to the state.
Just to let you know, my father, a retired entomologist from the University of Georgia, swears that he has disposed of the moonshine stock they once kept in the basement. Even though it tasted great. Really.
But beyond trading drinking experiences, the most interesting conversation I had was with old friend…
dblum | March 30, 2010A couple days ago, I wrote a post (Tyger, Tyger, Copper, Copper) about the theory that the late, great British poet William Blake (1757-1827) and been killed by copper poisoning due to years of acid-etching copper plates as a print maker.
One chemist promptly wrote to raise the possibility that it might instead have been acid poisoning. Blake used nitric acid to etch his plates and exposure to that corrosive compound, he pointed out, turns the skin yellow. One symptom of Blake's final illness was his deeply yellowed skin.
Nitric acid - sometimes called engraver's acid - has a long and…