Welcome to Laser Pointer Forums - discuss green laser pointers, blue laser pointers, and all types of lasers

Buy Site Supporter Role (remove some ads) | LPF Donations

Links below open in new window

FrozenGate by Avery

Deconstructing a Rear Projector Tv

Benm said:
Just checking on that, the -lowest- lethal dose to humans known is 0.8 grams/kg, equating to ingesting something like 50 grams off the stuff. This can happen when kids drink it because of its sweet taste, but there is no way you'd ingest that much my taking apart any device even if you licked your fingers while doing so.

As a reality check i tend to compare lethal doses to those of commonly used substance such as table salt, which kills about 50% of mammals at a 3g/kg intake.

There is no known lowest-fatal-dose for table salt as it's effects are usually chronic, not acute. Then again if you shared a kilogram package of salt (commonly sold) equally with 4 people, chances are 2 of them would die from that (and the other 2 ending up in hospital for a while).

Ethylene glycol is realiscally as poisonous as ethanol is. Ingesting a shot glass off it will probably do you little harm, but if you down a liter of the stuff the outcome is probably bad. Try drinking a liter of vodka or whiskey and the outcome of that is also not that good, and that's only a 40% solution in water ;)
Click to expand...

I don't know where you get your information, but according to the National Institutes of Health 4 fluid ounces is fatal to an adult man and as little as 30 ml has killed adults. It is nothing at all like ethanol as it is metabolized by alcohol dehydrogenase to glycolaldehyde which is oxidized to glycolic acid. This causes metabolic acidosis which causes kidney damage, brain, lungs, and liver failure and, of course, death. Just as a backup I checked Wikipedia, which is my source of last resort and it says pretty much the same thing. So, anytime you are willing to match me ounce for ounce, I'll drink 4 ounces of ethanol and you drink 4 ounces of ethylene glycol and we will see who lives and who dies. I'd even be willing to do a shot glass to shot glass if you are. And comparing toxicity of this to salt is not good toxicology or medical practice. ;)

Edit: I said that 0.1 ml/ Kg is toxic, not lethal. And just checking that, I was wrong in that the amount is considered to be over 0.1 ml./ Kg So, I was wrong in I didn't mention the over part.
 
Last edited:





paul1598419 said:
And comparing toxicity of this to salt is not good toxicology or medical practice. ;)

Edit: I said that 0.1 ml/ Kg is toxic, not lethal. And just checking that, I was wrong in that the amount is considered to be over 0.1 ml./ Kg So, I was wrong in I didn't mention the over part.
Click to expand...

Comparing how toxic something is compared to a familiar substance is very good practice really. Anything is toxic but it always depends on the dose.

People will often claim that 'substance x is toxic' without referring to the dose. At that point i wonder what they mean - toxic like water, sugar, ethanol, salt, aspirin, cyanide, botulinium toxin or what?

As far as defining toxic levels the LD50 is scientifically ideal since it can be established with the minimum number of lab animals. A problem with it is that you need to also establish the LDlo value in some cases, especially for substances that pose little harm in moderate concentration but become lethal in slightly higher ones.

One such substance would be alcohol (ethanol), where a night of heavy drinking with just a bad hangover is about half a lethal dose. From a toxicological standpoint it is one of the least forgiving drugs really - take 2 to 3 times the recreational amount and you are dead.

Luckily it incapacitates you to the point of being unable to hold a bottle of beer long before that happens, though rapidly downing shots could actually make you kill yourself from alcohol. Drinking yourself to death on an acute dose is actually quite difficult to do unless you just fill a few mugs with spirits and down that as fast as you can.
 
I didn't want to get too technical using LD50 or LD20 and such. As far as I know there is nothing more toxic ug for ug than botulinum toxin.
 
As far as i know that is still correct today.

I use it just as an example of something crazily toxic where inhaling an invisbly small flake could arealy prove fatal.

For more practical things i think a textbook poison would be sodium cyanide. It is a poison often used in fiction, but it would take a fair amount of it to take down an adult. It's LD50 is about 10 mg/kg, so 800 mg or so to give a 50/50 chance of killing a grown man.

This is more material than is in your typical parecetamol painkiller tablet, and it has a fair bit of taste (or better, smell) to it when dissolved into something acidic like a glass of wine.

You may wonder why this is relevant, but reality is that many prescription medications are actually more poisonois than cyanide when ingesting the same amount. One example would be the drug amlodipine used to treat high blood pressure, which has an LD50 comparable to sodium cyanide but is prescribed to millions of people (at much lower than lethal doses, unless you take it by the strip insted of the tablet).
 
Sodium Cyanide and other salts of cyanide have a bitter aimond smell, but only for those genetically predisposed to it. There are a fair number of people who can't detect the odor. Cyanide interferes with cellular respiration.
 
Last edited:
  • Like
Reactions: GSS
Guess there are more dangers in life than just some glycol - i hope you'll be okay!
 
im ok I was in a work car and had to look down at a phone and looked up and oh shit and rear ended a 2500 dodge pickup. I was in a toyota prius and at twenty miles a hour im just have a bruised hip and strained lower back but other wise I am ok
 
Glad to hear you're mostly okay!

Guess those seatbelts come in handy once in a while ;)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.





Back
Top