On 05/23/2017 01:57 PM, William Sudbrink via cctalk wrote:
I have a hard time getting my head around Dr. Wetterhahn's poisoning. How
many molecules of the toxin could have possibly entered her body?
How many molecules does it take to kill or fatally disable a cell? After it
does its damage, does the molecule become available again to do
more damage? How many cells in her body were actually killed? Do the
molecules somehow target the cells required to kill an individual?
If you killed just the "right" cells, how many cells does it take to kill a
person?
Yeah, this was sure a wake up call! I work in a chemistry
department, so we all have to go through a 1 hour
lab safety seminar every year. This case has been pretty
strongly pushed in those. She did everything everybody
thought was sufficient to protect her. Apparently, nobody
knew that methyl mercury could just soak through whatever
gloves she was wearing so quickly. As I understand it, she
immediately saw the drop of stuff drip on the glove, and she
completed what she was doing and removed the glove in much
less than one MINUTE!
Ummm, just a couple cells might be enough to kill you, if
they stopped your breathing or made you blood pressure go
haywire (high or low). But, she felt sick within minutes of
the exposure and went steadily downhill after that. So, she
apparently absorbed a lot of the methyl mercury, which WAS
known to be super-toxic and readily absorbed.
The Wikipedia article on Dr. Wetterhahn seems to indicate
this went a lot slower than we were told in the seminar.
Not sure who to trust, there.
Jon
