Levi
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Super toxin?
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From the March 2007 Reader's Digest:
Just outside the high-pressure ER of fictional Seattle Grace Hospital, home of hit ABC show Grey's Anatomy, George O'Malley is about to
make a stupid but believable mistake. As the doctor--played by T. R. Knight--sticks a needle in his patients arm to draw blood, a drop falls
unnoticed onto a piece of gauze. Instead of containing the waste, the doctor hands it, along with the blood sample, to a nurse, who passes it along
to a lab tech. Suddenly, chaos erupts as everyone becomes woozy and collapses.
The episode being filmed comes from a real-life case in Southern California: A woman undergoing chemotherapy ingests some kind of herbal remedy,
and the combination emits toxic fumes from her body, causing her attending doctors to pass out.
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O RLY?
This sounds way to unrealistic to be true, but the Reader's Digest is pretty reputable. Any ideas what this super gas could be? HCN and
H<sub>2</sub>S came to mind immediately but I have trouble believing such extreme toxicity even with these agents. Surely, nobody with
blood that toxic would be in need of a doctor as much as a mortician.
Chemcrime does not entail death. Chemcrime is death.
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Sauron
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What kind of chemotherapeutic agent? That covers a lot of territory.
And what kin of herbal remedy? That also covers a lot of territory.
Nobody died, or at least we aren't old anyone died, so maybe toxin is the wrong word.
Something biologically active, perhaps.
Answers? all we have so far are questions.
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Ozone
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IIRC, the vicitim had consumed (or applied topically) large amounts of DMSO, and had measurable dimethylsulfate in their blood. Perhaps this was
causal?
Eh?
O3
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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BromicAcid
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Yeah Ozone, I made a thread on it sometime back when in the thread on making dimethylsulfate. I remember it pretty well, it was on one of those
medical incredible shows.
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Sauron
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Topical DMSO = horse linament.
Smells like garlic. Or more precisely it makes the individual reek like garlic. That's probably what affected the attending.
DMSO is MeS(=O)Me
Oxidizes to dimethyl sulfone. Methyl groups are on the sulfur.
Quite differently:
Dimethyl sulfate is an ester of sulfuric acid and methanol. The methyl groups are on oxygen, or more precisely, those are methoxy groups on sulfur and
not methyl groups. In vivo that will hydrolyze and is both a potent methylating agent and a source of free sulfuric acid in tissues, very nasty.
MeOS(=O)2OMe
I don't see how to get from DMSO to dimethyl sulfate either in vivo or in vitro.
Or am I missing something?
[Edited on 27-2-2007 by Sauron]
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BromicAcid
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I've always thought it seemed a little far fetched but the story was highly publicized at one time.
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=health&re...
http://www.discover.com/issues/apr-95/features/analysisofato...
http://www.gasdetection.com/MDS/m092198.html
http://tafkac.org/medical/toxic_lady_faq.html
Etc. etc. Search 'Toxic Lady'
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Ozone
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I am aware of the differential betwixt DMSO, the sulfone and DMS (sulfate not sulfide, which is just a stinker). I never made sense of the metabolic
transformations then, either. But... It was the only thing I could remember about that particular scenario.
Anyhoo: http://www.gasdetection.com/MDS/m092198.html
Condemned as the source of the mysterious fumes, Gloria Ramirez achieved immortality as the "toxic lady."
...an explanation was found--by ...famed Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. .. Dimethyl sulfate, which is cited in scientific literature as a
chemical warfare agent, was created by an unusual confluence of chemical reactions.
...Ramirez used DMSO (dimethyl sulfoxide)... DMSO is metabolized to become dimethyl sulfone, which was found in her system, likely produced by the
administration of oxygen by paramedics.
When attendants drew blood from Ramirez in the emergency room, the relatively sudden and sharp drop in the temperature of her blood--from body
temperature to the cool air of the hospital-- could have created dimethyl sulfate, the lethal compound. Her body temperature was too high to allow
creation of the deadly compound internally.
Witnesses at the time said they saw crystals in the syringe containing Ramirez's blood, and scientists now believe those crystals were the source of
the mystery fumes.
The step of creating the lethal toxin from the benign dimethyl sulfone was performed at Lawrence Livermore...
There has to be more to it than that (I mean hell, it would be a redox process, that is, besides the temperature, another party needs to be involved)?
Flavor crystals?
Eh, again?
O3
[Edited on 27-2-2007 by Ozone]
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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Sauron
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Crystals in the syringe?
DMS is liquid.
To get from DMSO to DMS by whatever mechanism, you would have to break C-C bonds, oxidize the -S=O to sulfuric acid and then come up with some
methanol somehow... Maybe Lawrence Livermore should stick to H-bombs.
I just don't buy it. If this woman had DMS in her system (which would have fucked her up for sure) then maybe the stuff she applied was DMS and not
DMSO. Or, it was DMSO contaminated with DMS.
For years I have been warning people in a particular subculture who sometimes employ DMSO procured from veterinary sources, of the danger of the
similar sounding dimethyl sulfate. Generally I am scoffed at for my troubles, just as I am all too often about the hazards of the "violet wand" Tesla
coil (people think it is static electricity when it is really RF AC HV which is not so benign.)
If LLNL can explicate the supposed reaction path in vivo for DMSO -> let them do so. Till then I am definitely from Missouri on this one.
(If she applied DMS or DMSO contaminated with DMS, she should have had burns on skin, see Sartori's THE WAR GASES for acute DMS exposure effects.
If she had DMS in her blood she really would have been a DOA, and the proposition that a reaction was more likely at lower temperature than at higher
temperature makes no sense thermodynamically in wither chemistry or biochemistry. Except maybe by some competitive-inhibition process.
Show me.
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not_important
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I wonder if what had happened was she had been using DMSO, and had gotten a new greymarket batch where someone had screwed up and gotten some dimethyl
sulfate. Either she got a bottle of pure DMS, or it had been mixed in with DMSO and divided up.
Chemical supplies have long been targets for 'discounts', even for chemicals that aren't in demand forthe illegal drug market. Large hospitals that
got potable ethanol in drums would lose it rather fast, when a new drum was opened a portion was to be run out immediately to created vapor expansion
room before the tap/pump was put in place. Somehow that runout always was several times as large as it was supposed to be, and never got into the
hospital's normal containers (someone I knew in school told me about this, they were a major party supply contact...). Drums of DMSO have 'walked
away' at times. I could see someone coming across a shipment or shelf that had a bottle of dimethyl sulfate, misread it as DMSO, look around and see
no one was watching, and grab it to later sell as DMSO. Some detectivework on other deaths in the area around that time, and into reports of stole lab
supplies should be in order.
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Ozone
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Ah,
So you got my joke about the crystals! I have been trying to find that LLNL report, but to no avail...hmm.
I have to admit that my morbid curiousity has the best of me again.
Good night,
O3
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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Eclectic
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I always thought the symptoms sounded more like diazomethane poisioning. Some sort of nitroso compound in the trash bin reacting with something else
dumped on top of it...
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Sauron
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@O3 old pal, I am not doubting you, just this wild tale of woe. You are an honest broker of info, and just as mystified as I.
Sulfoxide to sulfate is, well, nonintuitive is the polite term.
A less polite term come to mind.  I can see getting to the sulfone in vivo, just
an oxidation.
But an insertion of two oxygens into two Me-S bonds?
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woelen
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| Quote: | | The episode being filmed comes from a real-life case in Southern California |
Oh... it is in California  . No need to discuss this any further over here, a
whole other thread is devoted to that subject.
If for a certain chemical the LD50 is 1 gram in the rest of the world, then it is 100 ug in California. Every chemical is 10000 times more toxic, when
it is in California  .
[Edited on 27-2-07 by woelen]
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Nicodem
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That "toxic lady" story was a hoax set up by the hospital in order to hide the reason why the pacient died. There use to be a news report about it.
I'm not sure but I think I saw the link on this forum. Obviously there is absolutely no way for DMSO to transform to dimethyl sulfate, either
chemically or metabolically.
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Sauron
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What a relief.
I'd hate to have to burn my books on sulfur chemistry.
Medical malpractice and institutional coverup. these are workaday matters.
The other is just through the looking glass.
Did LLNL get suckered into this? How?
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Ozone
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Thanks, Sauron!
My guess... $$$.
I can think of no other reason how dimethylsulfone can surreptitiously become the sulfate (metabolically). Amazing what a catalyst $$$ can be!
I wish I could get some,
O3
[Edited on 28-2-2007 by Ozone]
-Anyone who never made a mistake never tried anything new.
--Albert Einstein
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roamingnome
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GE developed a 3-barreled .50 cal version but it was never adopted
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just have to jump in.... on the gatling diversion...
if you have any leads on that technology we are working on peacuful gatling devices in the machine shop....
ive written "big companies" a futile endevour...
ive heard that aerosol guns are coming up.... an aerosol gatling gun would be very engaging
second I have seen copious pictures of technolgies that "are not adopted"
awsome things, like the 1960's pictures of electric eel expirments.
russian breifcase parabolic cookers... stuff that you need /want.... its a shame....
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