Paris green has an LD50 of 22 mg/kg, according to Wikipedia. That's one thousandth of the lethality of ricin, one fortieth of the lethality of sarin, half the lethality of sodium cyanide, one two-hundredth the lethality of alpha-amanitin, one fourth of the lethality of nicotine, roughly the same immediate lethality as hydrazine, methamphetamine, tetraethyllead, or aflatoxin B1, and only eight times as lethal as caffeine. It is very dangerous, and you should avoid getting it on you, but it seems unreasonable to describe it as one of the most toxic chemicals known. It is definitely not in the same category of nightmare chemicals as dimethylmercury, chlorine trifluoride, silane, or red fuming nitric acid. I'll admit that outgassing arsine if it gets moldy is pretty nasty, though.
I worked in a GaAs fab a couple years ago, they still do.
Although with all the other fun chemicals in use, safety training could be summarized as "and this one will kill you in this horrible way if something goes wrong/you do something wrong".
On a side point, handheld XRF readers are really cool. It's literally you point the device at a sample and it tells you what chemicals are in it. But why do they cost such a huge amount of money? Last I looked they were about $20,000-30,000 range.
Divide the cost of development by the number of devices expected to be sold within a reasonable payback period and add a percentage of profit required to make it worthwhile developing the thing in the first place and you'd probably come up with a pretty close approximation to the same price.
Yes, it's not a bad thing considering the alternative would be that those things might not exist anymore having been eaten and degraded by such pests. Clearly anything treated to prevent organisms from growing and consuming it is not going to be healthy for humans either.
Well, we used to have a radium paint in our watches
And there used to be radioactive thorium used in the making of lanterns. One company that manufactured the lamps in the early 1900's would just dump the leftover thorium into the ground in downtown Chicago.
Now any time a skyscraper is built in downtown Chicago, the soil has to be tested and often remediated.
> In 2011 Congress passed the Reduction of Lead in Drinking Water Act (RLDWA) revising the definition of lead free by lowering the maximum lead content of the wetted surfaces of plumbing products (such as pipes, pipe fittings, plumbing fittings and fixtures) from 8% to a weighted average of 0.25% [https://www.epa.gov/dwstandardsregulations/use-lead-free-pip...]
I remember as a kid wondering how that mantle - which looked like cloth - could glow without disintegrating. Worse yet - break one of those mantles, then breathe in a particle ...
As opposed to some other countries where they have whole villages dedicated to recycling car batteries by hand[1] and still use leaded glaze on their food dishes[2].
As long as you didn't grind the dial into dust and inhale it, it was pretty safe and an excellent solution compared to the weak glow of Super-Luminova pigment.
Incidentally, there has been some recent publication indicating that this may not be true, albeit for different reasons than the typical Radium Girls pathology:
I don't think this is true. Army training taught that if the glass over radium glowing dials in a vehicle was compromised, to cover it with wood or cardboard (if that is all you had) and tape/secure it down.
A squad leader of my Army platoon once had a crate of about 30 compasses that had radium markings. Anyway, he had the box in his truck, left the gate at Fort Benning then when he returned later, he set off the radiation detectors at the entry gate. Caused a full base lockdown and needless to say, he didn’t have a very pleasant time until they figured out that the compasses set off the detectors. This was in 2004 when we were on a high alert for dirty bombs.
Radium was also used in chocolate, drinking water, toothpaste, cosmetics, suppositories, jock straps and "radioactive “bougies” – wax rods inserted into the urethra".
I remember reading this was not an issue because the minerals in the water binds with the pipes and create a coating inside the pipe, so any water running through it doesn't come in contact with the actual lead pipe. Does anyone know anything more about that?
It definitely is an issue, though the mineral content of the water may make it less of an issue. See Flint, Michigan for an example of lead levels changing in response to the water makeup.
I assume you're joking, but yes. The issue is surface area and cross section, as these very small molecules tend to disrupt/block catalytic processes inside the cell. In the early hype days of nanotechnology they were thought to be extremely bio-compatible because they are basically chemically inert from a biological perspective, but it turns out they can act very well as a wrench in the gears of cellular machinery in ways that we are just now beginning to understand.
I don't want that to be considered anti-nanotech in any way, as that is my field and hope for the future. But that vision of carbon nanobots swimming our bloodstream is probably not accurate foretelling of the future. We'll probably be using protein components instead for easier bio-biodegradability.
I often wonder the same thing. It seems likely that something we take for granted is possibly poisonous considering the number of chemicals we are exposed to in various ways.
I'm waiting for the full story on endocrine disruptors. Maybe there's nothing there, but it also doesn't seem like we really understand their total effects.
I imagine most likely at this point things that are flat out lethal are less likely, but there will be a lot more things that while not lethal might be quite inconvenient - or even just a nuisance, without being truly obvious.
Or you could look at the very comprehensive evidence available now.
Cigarette companies weren't unaware of the health dangers of their products. Asbestosis wasn't a mystery for decades before any serious action was taken.
I was hoping for 30+ year studies on this topic. Also, for things like LASIK surgery where people who have had LASIK 50+ years earlier and what effects it had on their vision.
What about all the crazy stuff people do to their bodies in the name of beauty? Most of that has to be unhealthy. Skin whitening, starvation, insertion and removal of stuff, stretching of stuff, etc. An ode to the humble corset?
Although observable physical effects on humans have not been proven, behavioral effects on insects have been documented.
These are interesting pilot studies because insect behavior is relatively simple and deviations more easily measured when compared to humans. Any explanations as far as the physical mechanism would involve changes in brain chemistry/activity which can be too subtle to detect.
I would hold out on a final verdict for now as far as humans go and I don't think further studies should be ridiculed as paranoid just yet. Given the global use of cellphones I think it's better to err on the side of caution.
It's an unpopular suggestion, especially at a time when tin foil hat conspiracies abound, but I don't think it's uneasonable. Emf is an observed physical phenomenon so there is nothing supernatural about the possibility of it's effects on human behavior.
I should also add that what we really have is not so much a solid body of evidence but a number of studies which show a lack of evidence. This could just as easily point to the harmlessness of cell phones as our inability to observe their effects.
Thoughtful and well made counterpoint to the sometimes overprotective stance tech industry people take to criticisms of cell phones. Seems to me like the issue is the dosage - there has never been any organism exposed to this sustained level of background EMF. Any longitudinal study started after widespread adoption.
Do you have any links for the references you made to effects on insect behavior?
I'm not coming from a basis in tech, but rather physics. I have a strong background in elecromagnetic theory and physical chemistry. What, may I ask, is the physical basis for the claim that cell phone radiation causes _______ in biological systems?
For the most part biology is applied chemistry of organic molecules. Due to something called the photoelectric effect, the thing for which Einstein won the Nobel prize (not relativity) and gave birth to quantum theory, we know that EM radiation below a certain material-dependent threshold is incapable of causing chemical reactions. And this is a property of the frequency, not the intensity--it does not matter how bright or compact the source is, or how close you hold it to your ear! If the incoming EM radiation is below that threshold it will have zero measurable effect on chemistry, just some smaller frequency back-scattering and thermal agitation way below the noise threshold. Things above this threshold is what we call "ionizing radiation" because they create ions which affect chemical processes and is why UV light is so dangerous. Cell phone frequencies are 4-6 orders of magnitude below this threshold, depending on the band. Note also that cell phone frequencies are below the level of infrared and visible-light radiation -- all life is being constantly bathed in higher-frequency radiation than your cell phone gives off. And I remind you, it is only the frequency which matters.
And surprise, surprise, if you're not cherry picking studies[1] there is no measurable effect of cell phone radiation on biological systems. Except, perhaps, as quoted by the GP some insects and birds, which is hardly surprising and already known--these species have sensitive organs we lack that enable them to detect electromagnetic fields for navigation purposes. So a bit of a "duh" there since it is about as controversial a result as "sudden bright strobe lights on freeways at night cause traffic accidents".
The effect of EM radiation on biological systems was heavily studied long before the advent of cell phones. It was known to not cause any measurable effect in humans before mobile high-bandwidth data communications was anything more than a glint in the eye of some dreamy EE.
EDIT: The obvious retort is "what about microwaves?" After all kitchen microwaves operate on the same frequency as your home WiFi. Your desktop microwave acts not by harmonics with the rotational frequency of water, a common myth, but by that that effect I mentioned of smaller frequency back-scattering and thermal agitation. Your counter-top microwave emits 1kW of power into the food put inside it, which is 100-1,000x as much as your cell phone antenna puts out. And it does so inside a closed cavity instead of an omnidirectional antenna. At that power and with full absorption, thermal effects are no longer negligible.
That's why, for example, technicians working with cell phone tower and microwave antenna installations turn off equipment before standing near the transmitter. They do take proper safety precautions. But the concern here is cooked meat, not some abstract radiation or bio-poisoning thing that will cause cancer 10 years down the line.
The concern over cell phone radio emissions started in part due to the large amount of anecdotal reports from those technicians of insects suffering die off near transmitter stations and migratory birds flying straight into the things, killing themselves. But we shouldn't be surprised -- these insects and birds have large organs meant to sense magnetic fields which operate as crude radio antennas, making them actually sensitive to the EM radiation being put out. But this really isn't any different than, say, deer getting trapped by bright headlights on a dark road, and we shouldn't take it as evidence that the same mechanism might be affecting human beings.
Then again, if you for whatever reason have a conductive surgical implant anywhere near your head or pocket, I wouln't suggest using a cell phone or laptop (on your lap). The concern is not great, but that does put you in the same situation as those insects and birds. I wouldn't be worried about the devices used by poeple around you though (1/R^2 laws and all that).
Thanks for the post, that's all really great information (I just have a stats background, not a physicist/chemist).
My immediate concern based on what you said, and not to go off on a tangent here, would actually be for the bees. You mentioned that it is the frequency and not intensity that matters for humans - is it the same case for the animals/insects that are sensitive to the frequencies?
If we are effectively shining flashlights in their faces, increasing the intensity with each successive generation of wireless, can it eventually affect their ability to pollinate? Birds pollinate as well, to a lesser extent, so it would be the same concern here, on top of the pest control and general ecosystem balance that they provide.
The short answer is I don’t know, but if I read your question correctly I suspect the answer is “not much impact, if any.” Cell transmission towers would be dangerous at close range, but cell phones themselves would be like flashlights as you say, but not bright ones, and probably not noticeable at all, except at very close range. They’re not listening to these frequencies.
I would think it perhaps analogous to ultrasound. Our electronics are giving off all sorts of ultrasonic noise that we can’t hear (but sometimes annoy dogs and millennials). We have ears capable of hearing, but not at those frequencies. But you could nevertheless expect hearing loss if you put a 1kW ultrasonic beacon right next to your ear.
People working at radar installations were exposed to much higher dosage of EMF than the usage of mobile phones since the second world war. Are there any studies about effect of those?
Not that I'm aware of. A general difficulty with interpreting case studies also is the number of unmeasured confounding factors. And when studying humans, what are we checking - is it simply increased rates of cancer? Or if it is behavioral/mental changes, then the natural differences in personal behaviors across individuals would make it practically impossible to set a control.
Maybe once we finally develop a clone army we can know for sure.
Unlikely. Plastics are composed of large bio-compatible molecules. The main danger of plastics by themselves is displacement--bits of plastic getting lodged in tissue or cells and sticking around because of that bio-compatibility. That's a real concern, but hardly on the same level as arsenic which chemically disrupts the function of our cells.
There are secondary effects of plastics which accumulate and later release other toxins, but it's a bit disingenuous to blame that on the plastic.
There are some studies suggesting that type 2 diabetes might be prion-transmitted, which are not destroyed by normal sterilization techniques. So we might be transmitting that (and god knows what else) with routine surgery.
Yes, and that's not mutually exclusive with there being a biochemical risk factor that triggers it or increases susceptibility.
It is certainly a little out there, but if I had to guess at some hidden danger that's ubiquitous in our environment to which we are oblivious, I'd say "prions are more prevalent and dangerous than we think" isn't a bad place to start.
That's two cases out of nine in a photo of two pages of Gray's anatomy style illustrations - it takes a sharp eye to quickly identify the dongle, and it's clearly a medical book.
