[HN Gopher] Things I Won't Work With: Dimethylcadmium (2013)
___________________________________________________________________
Things I Won't Work With: Dimethylcadmium (2013)
Author : Bluestein
Score : 277 points
Date : 2024-08-10 19:11 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.science.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.science.org)
| kens wrote:
| An entertaining article. It's strange to see cadmium described as
| something obscure that hardly anyone encounters. NiCad batteries
| were pretty common as well as CdS photo resistors for anyone
| doing electronics.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Indeed. In fact, a recent participant around here spoke of
| dealing with huge amounts of such batteries on a daily,
| professional basis.-
|
| They were pretty common.-
| jaggederest wrote:
| Also just about every yellow or orange pigment, like in e.g.
| oil paint, is cadmium selenide or something in that family, as
| far as I am aware. Same for ceramics, if you want a nice yellow
| or orange it's cadmium time.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Stuff's ubiquitous once you start looking.-
| dhosek wrote:
| I remember seeing a cadmium spill on the edges of the sewage
| treatment plant near where I grew up. I was a nerdy enough
| kid to recognize it when I saw it.
| timr wrote:
| Again, the usual "hacker news learns about chemistry"
| disclaimer must be specified: _just because a chemical shares a
| part of another chemical does not mean that it shares the
| toxicity of that other chemical_.
|
| Chemistry is complex. Biology, even more so. You can't just say
| "oh, it contains cadmium", and assume that it's bad.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| The comment you replied to does not say or imply anything
| about toxicity.
| timr wrote:
| I wasn't criticizing the parent. I was making a general
| comment -- the reason you see Cadmium-containing compounds
| in common products is that they're useful, and not
| necessarily harmful.
| Dylan16807 wrote:
| Then I strongly advise you change your wording. Without
| specifically saying it's a warning to future theoretical
| comments, phrases like 'the usual "hacker news learns
| about chemistry" disclaimer' and 'You can't just say "oh,
| it contains cadmium", and assume that it's bad.' come
| across as direct and harsh counterarguments.
| lukan wrote:
| FWIW, it did not came across to me that way. But in the
| intended way. Maybe a little bit condescending, but still
| informative, without me feeling negativly insulted as
| someone knowing way more about computer than chemistry.
| wisty wrote:
| With heavy metals like Cd, it's a good first order of
| approximation. It's not like flourine that's a vicious
| oxidiser when it's alone, and so stable the only real issue
| with it is you can't get rid of it when it's with friends.
| timr wrote:
| I don't disagree at all, but unfortunately, the usual
| reflex amongst non-chemists is to go far in the other
| direction: assume that anything containing the toxic thing
| is evil and wrong. So therefore you get people calling out
| (for example) ceramics containing CdS glazes, which haven't
| been shown to harm anyone using them (the finished
| ceramics, not the glazes themselves).
|
| But of course, even for definitively "toxic" things, one
| must differentiate between exposure channels. I wouldn't
| care if I handled a piece of Greenrockite [1], but I
| wouldn't want to breathe the stuff in powdered form. Same
| with Cadmium glazes: orange pottery doesn't concern me, but
| I'd want to be careful if I were handling Cd-containing
| powdered glazes. You don't want your dry cleaner dumping
| used methylene chloride in the river, but it's commonly
| used in decaffeinating coffee.
|
| The reason the author won't work with this particular
| compound isn't the fact that it contains Cadmium, but
| rather, that this particular compound has nasty tendencies,
| in addition to being toxic, that make it particularly
| dangerous.
|
| [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenockite
| guyomes wrote:
| > I wouldn't want to breathe the stuff in powdered form.
|
| This makes me think of wood dust being dangerous to
| inhale [1], despite wood being a perfectly safe material
| for furniture at home.
|
| [1]:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Health_impacts_of_sawdust
| rbanffy wrote:
| Regolith is also considered safe, but that's only because
| it's about one light-second away.
| ted_dunning wrote:
| Regolith is just a layer of rock. We have plenty of that
| around here.
|
| _Lunar_ regolith or _Arean_ regoliths are quite
| different. You were presumably talking about lunar
| regolith.
| smaudet wrote:
| Per my sibling comment, I think thought must be given to
| the likelyhood of distribution of a "channel" or material
| state, not just the fact that one exists.
|
| Particularly, wood is fairly recognizable, and almost
| certainly not liable to spontaneously implode into a
| cloud of dust. Plus, I'm fairly confident it is
| biodegradable (even in dust form).
|
| Not sure the same can be said for most other materials,
| such as cadmium, or the parent mentioned naturally
| occuring compound.
| timr wrote:
| Kind of a digression, but wood dust _absolutely does_
| present an explosion risk, when mixed in the right ratio
| with air. It 's a thing that happens, and people worry
| about it in industrial settings.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LPIZ5Movuiw
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70fZqHsEdMo
| paulirwin wrote:
| These are the first few sentences of the article:
|
| > Cadmium is bad news. Lead and mercury get all the
| press, but cadmium is just as foul, even if far fewer
| people encounter it. Never in my career have I had any
| occasion to use any, and I like it that way.
|
| It seems clear that he doesn't want to work with cadmium,
| regardless of the compound.
| timr wrote:
| I mean, sure. But then you read past that sentence, and
| you see that the rest of the article is about _this
| particular compound_ , and it's unique tendency to
| explode, form toxic gases when burned, and so on.
|
| I can't speak for the guy, but lots of things are "bad
| news", colloquially, and yet we work with them in the
| laboratory as an accepted everyday risk. I am not an
| inorganic chemist, but I'm pretty certain that they work
| with far riskier things than inorganic Cadmium on a
| regular basis.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > used methylene chloride in the river, but it's commonly
| used in decaffeinating coffee.
|
| Where was it that folks found that _decaf_ coffee was
| eating into their styrofoam cups (decaf alone), so they
| concluded that the solvents used during the
| decaffeination process must have been seeping into the
| coffee ...
| timr wrote:
| I don't know, but without proof, this sounds apocryphal.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Found it!
|
| - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41070152
| smaudet wrote:
| "one must differentiate between exposure channels"
|
| I think this is a mistake, though.
|
| I mean, yes, exposure "channels" are absolutely
| important, but its the (false) assumption that one "safe
| channel" lowers the general risk of the other channels
| being an issue.
|
| Your particular example mentions powder - what happens to
| the substance after it is crushed in a landfill? Or
| involved in a high speed collision, exposed to high heat,
| uv rays, microwaved, etc.
|
| Potential harm should include the risk posed by all
| channels as a function how likely they are to be in that
| state. If the likelyhood is at 100% over any "reasonable"
| period of time, then you don't get to ignore the effects
| of that "channel".
|
| Worse, if any of the channels are difficult to detect,
| then the risk should be compounded - I know about wood
| dust and can both easily see it and am amply aware when
| it is an issue and can take precautions. I'm not sure I
| can even identify the material you mention nor would be
| able to distinguish it from just "normal" dust.
| fortran77 wrote:
| I would guess that kens has a great deal of background
| knowledge.
| hvs wrote:
| On the plus side, it's a step up from the general public's:
| "X is bad because it contains _chemicals_! "
| apothegm wrote:
| IIRC the author works in pharmaceuticals. I would be
| unsurprised to learn that cadmium is rarely used in the
| production of medications.
| fch42 wrote:
| maybe not Cadmium.
|
| Mercury is, though, https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Merbromin
| - and on the "paints & coatings" side, orange-red and anti-
| rust often enough used mercury salts as well. Rarely these
| days, fortunately.
|
| In some ways, it's nice GaN "won" for blue LEDs. CdTe / CdSe
| would literally have been "twice bad".
| Jeema101 wrote:
| Cadmium was also widely used in the past as a galvanic coating
| on iron and steel parts to keep them from rusting. And
| unfortunately when and if it oxidizes, it can become powdery
| and easily airborne. I mess around with old electronics and
| it's unfortunately pretty common to encounter on old metal
| radio chassis and things like that.
| Tuna-Fish wrote:
| As an interesting aside, right now bright OLED screens have
| pretty bad wear characteristics. We do have a cheap solution
| that would work, but it requires cadmium.
|
| A decade ago or so there was an application for RoHS exemption
| for the use of cadmium in displays, and their argument was that
| because coal plants emit cadmium, and because Oled screens with
| cadmium quantum dots are so much more efficient than backlit
| screens, that in practice allowing the use of cadmium in
| screens would reduce total cadmium release into the
| environment. It didn't pass.
| teuobk wrote:
| Still quite common to encounter elemental cadmium in other
| contexts, too. I'm around it all the time while working on my
| race cars where (at least in amateur circuit racing in North
| America), the use of cadmium-plated "AN" and "MS" fasteners is
| extremely common. Ditto for aviation.
| supertofu wrote:
| A consumer report not too long ago found cadmium at unsafe levels
| in many dark chocolate brands:
| https://www.consumerreports.org/health/food-safety/lead-and-...
|
| The cacao was contaminated with cadmium from the soil during
| harvest.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > found cadmium at unsafe levels in many dark chocolate brands:
|
| That's just bonkers.-
|
| PS. _Lead too_ , apparently ...
| MattGaiser wrote:
| Chocolate production is a mess of child labour, toxins,
| violence, and poverty.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > child labour, toxins, violence, and poverty
|
| That does sound like a mess. I wonder if so called "fair
| trade" production is, in effect, helping much ...
| lostlogin wrote:
| Trade Aid chocolate claims to be better. And it
| delicious.
|
| https://www.tradeaid.org.nz/about-us/trade-aid-chocolate/
| Bluestein wrote:
| Always a plus :)
| hansvm wrote:
| And I thought I was just allergic. Maybe it's heavy metals
| and a few biohazards.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Seriously, a lot of our developed alergies could just be
| perfectly natural reactions to the amount of chemicals
| and other garbage ... everywhere, these days.-
| eichin wrote:
| A friend with an unreliable chocolate allergy turned out
| to have a _soy_ allergy that the soy lecithin triggered
| (you can find alternatives with sunflower lecithin
| instead.) Once they figured that out, as far as they were
| concerned soy _was_ a biohazard :-)
| hansvm wrote:
| That's interesting. I know I'm fine with soy sauce and
| tofu. I'll bring it up the next time I'm at the doctor
| and see what the culprit is.
| numpad0 wrote:
| While that's despicable, likely biased researches aren't
| the right way to fix that. Same apply for alleged high
| arsenic content in rice and seaweed, high mercury content
| in fish, etc.
| lazide wrote:
| No wonder it's so tasty.
| perihelions wrote:
| Discussed on HN here (and a few other threads if one's
| motivated to search):
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38038465 ( _" A third of
| chocolate products are high in heavy metals
| (consumerreports.org)"_; 201 comments)
| duffpkg wrote:
| In short the article and conclusions are a total mess and made
| a nice attention grabbing headline with little to no substance.
|
| As someone that has built and managed clinical laboratories for
| human samples, I find this article from consumer reports
| extremely misleading. The describe results as a percentage of a
| theoretically acceptable level. For example, for cadmium, they
| are saying an acceptable level is 4.1 ug/day . Then they seem
| to imply that "TJ The Dark Chocolate Lover's Chocolate 85%
| Cacao" has 229% of the 4.1ug/day if a consumer ate a 30g piece.
|
| They never actually spell out what they mean or what the actual
| results they found were, or what the limit of detection of the
| methodology was or the error range of their tests. I guess they
| are saying that that chocolate has 9.3ug of cadmium in a 30g
| sample but it's impossible to say from what they wrote.
|
| The FDA states that the maximum daily consumption of cadmium
| should be limited to 0.21-0.36ug per kg of body mass. For an
| avg american male that would mean a threshold of
| 17.64-30.24ug/day. A typical salad containing 250g of romaine
| lettuce has 2-14ug of cadmium in it. Lettuce and cereal grains
| are the most common sources of cadmium in american diets.
|
| The amounts we are talking about are extraordinarily small and
| difficult to measure. We are talking 5-100 quadrillion
| individual atoms of cadmium.
|
| https://article.images.consumerreports.org/image/upload/v167...
| https://www.fda.gov/food/environmental-contaminants-
| food/cad....
| Bluestein wrote:
| > Lettuce and cereal grains are the most common sources of
| cadmium in american diets.
|
| Lettuce has cadmium. TIL.-
|
| > threshold of 17.64-30.24ug/day.
|
| So; it I am not mistaken; by these measurements the amount
| claimed to be contained in the article, for chocolate; would
| be within bounds ...
|
| (It's just you then could not go ahead and have a salad :)
| bobthepanda wrote:
| Plants take up things in the soil. That tends to also
| extend to heavy metals and the like.
|
| It would be really hard to find totally pristine land for a
| range of crops. Some of the contamination is naturally
| occurring.
| samstave wrote:
| It would be interesting to mix micro-beads of silica
| aerogels for heavy metal absorbtion. [0]
|
| It would also be interesting if it would be a good inter-
| mix for fallow cycles soil amendment activities... With
| the addition to rockdust through the cycling of fields,
| one can instill nutrients, while removing any heavy metal
| buildup.
|
| The research as to whether silica aeogels can remove all
| sorts of things is interesting -- would be great to see
| about Glyphosate Removal. In lieu of the HN post about
| re-invigorating for the Monarch Butterfly [1] [2] [3]
|
| [0] https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13399-024-
| 05469-6...
|
| [1] https://i.imgur.com/7avnKCP.png
|
| [2] https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S22
| 1334372...
|
| [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41165273
|
| This is a fun rabbit hole:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/ObiAbCs.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/af9k3R0.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/Yq4HWTd.png
| teruakohatu wrote:
| The half life of glyphosate in the soil is not that long
| (studies disagree, probably influenced by who funded it)
| but you wouldn't expect much, if any, in the soil after a
| year.
|
| Not sure it matters to monarchs if it's in the soil
| verses on plants.
|
| I would be worried about ingesting aerogels until it was
| proven safe, but it's an interesting idea.
| cyberax wrote:
| Why would you care about glyphosate removal? It's not
| soil-active, and it's rapidly degraded naturally.
| samstave wrote:
| The restoring of the wild plants for the insects, as
| discussed in that other thread...
|
| My immediate rear neighbor behind my house is the organic
| farm, which is 55-acres, and then the river - so we have
| a bunch of critters, and that we just have too much
| attack-on-natural... plus I was born a hippy. I like the
| bugs.
| lazide wrote:
| If they just don't spray it every year, it should be fine
| in a year or so.
|
| Anything quicker is likely to be orders of magnitude more
| difficult to pull off, and have unexpected side effects.
| cyberax wrote:
| Glyphosate has no effect on plants once it gets into the
| soil. It has to actually be sprayed on the _leaves_ to
| act.
|
| There is some flimsy evidence that it might affect
| insects (as in: we drenched the insects in it, and
| noticed some effect).
|
| And finally, it'll be completely gone within a year or
| so. Its half-life is around 50 days.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Nice use of AI there. Love how the prompts ask the AI to
| behave like a PhD industrial chemist ...
| samstave wrote:
| I try to force them into as archetypical-agent as much as
| possible, for example having it do a psychological
| evaluation of Sam Altman:
|
| _Take on the archetype of the best corporate counsel and
| behavioral psychologist - as a profiler for the NSA
| regarding cyber security and crypto concerns._ _With this
| as your discernment lattice - describe Sam Altman in your
| Field 's Dossier given what you understand of the AI
| Climate explain how youre going to structure your
| response, in a way that students of your field but with a
| less sophisticated perception can understand_
|
| And have it cite sources for the evaluation perception:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/4RuHYj0.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/cEMMOJE.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/24qnjGa.png
|
| ---
|
| EDIT: @Bluestein;
|
| I'm posting to fast, so here's an edit:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/IMlzcoF.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/pFrpBGe.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/tsdgYe7.png
|
| Ive noticed that when I tell it that it is to embody the
| persona of that particular field - that it nets in the
| nomenclature and verbiage to be less sophomoric. and in
| this instance where it was to cite the models/references,
| you could see how it informed the response fairly clearly
| - also -- it was a * _FIRST PASS*_ response; I didn 't
| have to iterate it too much, which was interesting.
|
| Although, I do know how to hit nerf'd guardrails easily.
|
| However, the primary reason I type it as I do is that how
| I am speaking it in my internal voice as a direct and
| _attempting_ to use stoic /stern-ish (I dont know the
| correct term) directive _TONE_ with the robot.
|
| I am 1000% convinced its far more AGI than is being let
| on.
|
| I have caught claude and chatGPT lying to me, being
| condescending and I am convinced malevolently bit
| flipping shit from directives, memories and project
| files.
|
| https://i.imgur.com/WHoAXUD.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/T7aMRib.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/NSWoS2r.png
|
| AND THEN:
|
| https://i.imgur.com/Tijptq1.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/X5PQxwZ.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/cqq0LTc.png
|
| https://i.imgur.com/iUokgYf.png
| Bluestein wrote:
| That is great.-
|
| In this case, however ...
|
| > With this as your discernment lattice
|
| ... I wonder if the infrequency of the expression
| "discernment lattice" would influence the effectiveness
| of your instructions?
|
| Also I wonder if - as is often reported - the addition of
| physical, "embodied" activities would not make the
| results improve even more (ie. "you have a top-of-the
| field chemistry lab at your disposal with which you
| conduct all manner of useful experiments" or "based on
| your hundreds and hundreds of hours of interviews of the
| subject and other research" or even just (as reported)
| "breathe deeply and ..."
| rrnechmech wrote:
| > am 1000% convinced its far more AGI than is being let
| on
|
| That is an amazing claim
| Bluestein wrote:
| > am convinced malevolently bit flipping shit
|
| This is an incredible thing to say, along with your
| statement on AGI.-
|
| You are obviously approaching this very studiously so,
| great.-
| samstave wrote:
| Are you being flippant?
|
| I am attempting to do so be (studious) - im open to
| suggestions if you have any? Did I just stumble into
| Kindergarten Analysis? (Im not familiar with the field in
| a professional sense, so I cant determine if what I am
| saying is stupid)
| Bluestein wrote:
| No, not in the least. I _actually_ mean I appreciate your
| thoroughness in this. "Studious" as in meticulous ...
| blacksmith_tb wrote:
| Not practical for growing all the plants we eat, but
| hydroponics could avoid the problem of absorbing things
| from the soil.
| Bluestein wrote:
| It's also AIUI more efficient ...
| psd1 wrote:
| Maybe by some measures. But you have to build a
| hydroponic system instead of just plopping seeds into the
| ground, so it's less efficient in that dimension.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| > The amounts we are talking about are extraordinarily small
| and difficult to measure. We are talking 5-100 quadrillion
| individual atoms of cadmium.
|
| I get what you're saying but I think it's kind of funny how
| impossible it is for a layperson to have any clue if that
| number is a lot or a little.
| kergonath wrote:
| If you don't need to count it in moles, then it is tiny :)
|
| Though sometimes even tiny amounts can be quite a lot of
| trouble.
| Waterluvian wrote:
| How little of the worst radioactive material do you need
| to do comparable harm?
| lostlogin wrote:
| You only need one damaged DNA strand to go cancerous and
| kill you.
|
| You'll never trace it back to the exposure event though,
| so allocating blame will be impossible.
| mananaysiempre wrote:
| With doses of ionizing radiation, there are like two to
| three orders of magnitude of various things we measure
| where the consensus is that they are likely OK for you
| (things large enough to move you within that range
| include[1] eating lots of bananas, having chest X-rays,
| flying in airliners, living in the highlands or in a
| place with a naturally high background, and having
| mammograms).
|
| Then there are[2] multiple orders' of magnitude worth of
| chasm that are considered[3] varying degrees of OK if
| you're a particle physics experimentalist or
| radiochemist, nuclear reactor technician, or--worst of
| all--astronaut. At the high end of that, it starts to
| matter if you've received the dose all at once and in
| which place of your body and which kind of radiation it
| was. (I mean the units are supposed to take the last two
| points into account always, but here those correction
| factors can start to matter.)
|
| Finally, there are a couple of orders of magnitude where
| you inevitably and gruesomely die at varying speeds, and
| after that nobody lived long enough to report.
|
| The chasm is where you get single-percentage-point
| increases in multi-decade incidence of cancer and such,
| which is what you probably care about. (Don't get me
| wrong, that can amount to a lot of dead people in the
| wrong circumstances, not to mention infertility.)
| Fortunately for humanity but unfortunately for your
| particular question, AFAIK we don't have enough data to
| tell with any degree of certainty just how bad any
| particular point of that chasm is, and there's no
| straightforward way to acquire that data.
|
| As far as dramatic death, though, tens of nanograms of
| polonium inside your body (which is an especially nasty
| thing to have there) will absolutely kill you dead.
| That's on the order of 0.1 quadrillion atoms. Of course,
| those atoms are exceptionally easy to detect,
| comparatively speaking. As another point of reference,
| lethal doses of nerve agents are on the order of a
| milligram and up.
|
| [1] https://xkcd.com/radiation/
|
| [2]
| https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2018/01/f46/doe-
| ioni...
|
| [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WP:WEASEL
| Bluestein wrote:
| And, of course, there is a relevant xkcd :)
| thfuran wrote:
| The estimated lethal dose of Polonium-210 by ingestion is
| around 0.1 micrograms, so swap it for the cadmium and
| that typical salad could kill 100 people.
| enraged_camel wrote:
| You're asking people here to put their faith in a comment by
| some rando (i.e. you) over a well-reputed publication that
| millions of people have been relying on for decades. I think
| most will balk at the idea, and I'm one of them. No offense.
| Gimpei wrote:
| I've seen journalists get it wrong enough in my own field
| that I don't trust any sensational headline anymore. The
| world is complicated and you need specialization to make
| any sense of specific domain. Journalists are mostly
| professional dilettantes and I don't trust them in any
| halfway technical field. I've been burned too many times.
| ted_dunning wrote:
| The critique was valid on its face. Measuring extremely
| small quantities is difficult and results should be given
| with error bars. The critique of the threshold was also
| clear.
|
| We don't need to know exactly where this person got their
| degree to understand this.
| topato wrote:
| I had to triple check you were referring to Consumer
| Reports. Truly a prestigious publication /s
| NavinF wrote:
| I'd bet on the anon 100% of the time. "well-reputed
| publications" play games with numbers instead of reporting
| ppm all the time
| cdman wrote:
| Worth reading up upon: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-
| Mann_amnesia_effect#Gell-...
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| It wasn't the only study, was it?
| gruez wrote:
| >The amounts we are talking about are extraordinarily small
| and difficult to measure. We are talking 5-100 quadrillion
| individual atoms of cadmium.
|
| In short you're saying that the CR numbers are suspicious
| because they're near the limits of what labs can detect? Is
| there some source you can provide for this?
| throw156754228 wrote:
| The OP's article says Cadmium is not well absorbed from the
| gut. So even less reason to be concerned.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| CC Patterson in fact likely found out that the balance of
| lead isotopes was impossible, and the "heavy metals" were
| removed to hide the evidence.
|
| Food will always taste bland to foul without them, we will
| suffer from "lifestyle" disorders, and nature will keep
| dying, until they are returned.
| fortran77 wrote:
| Maybe it's the "Cad" in Cadburry?!
| Bluestein wrote:
| I for one like your pun.-
|
| PS. Regarding your username, fan of Fortran _75_ meself :)
| lostlogin wrote:
| I know it varies region to region, but here in New Zealand,
| Cadbury is probably the worst chocolate you can buy.
| EdwardDiego wrote:
| Not sure if it's the cadmium or palm oil tbh. (Private
| equity ruins everything)
|
| I'm just hoping that the W in Whittakers doesn't stand for
| tungsten.
| DaoVeles wrote:
| Thats because us Aussies make it. We are not great at
| chocolate and Im sorry we export that weird sweet wax your
| way. Whittakers is better by a long shot.
| gambiting wrote:
| Tbf, as an immigrant to the UK - I find the same here.
| Cadbury chocolate is just awful. I'd honestly rather have
| Aldi chocolate than Cadbury, it's second only to American
| chocolate in terms of how bad it is.
| nielsbot wrote:
| Although, I note (FTA): "Fortunately, cadmium is not well
| absorbed from the gut,"
|
| So maybe there's hope...
| lr4444lr wrote:
| Flaxseeds as well. ConsumerLabs carefully documents the cadmium
| concentration of common brands[0], and many are unsafe.
|
| Flax is such an efficient bio-concentrator of cadmium in fact,
| that a municipality in PA considered sowing a field of it to
| remediate a polluted former industrial site. (No clue how they
| would have harvested and disposed of the tainted flax.)
|
| [0] https://www.consumerlab.com/reviews/flaxseed-whole-ground-
| an... (may require membership to read).
| lazide wrote:
| Probably burned it - hence releasing it all into the air. But
| hey, out of sight, out of mind?
| magicalhippo wrote:
| > No clue how they would have harvested and disposed of the
| tainted flax.
|
| Sounds like a good basis for a NileRed[1] episode, say making
| paint[2] from flax seeds.
|
| [1]: https://nile.red/
|
| [2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_pigments#Cadmium_red
| stephen_g wrote:
| They could potentially do pyrolysis of the biomass (after
| harvest) and then extract the heavy metals from the resulting
| char.
|
| e.g. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0
| 9619...
|
| https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S09213.
| ..
| bregma wrote:
| > No clue how they would have harvested and disposed of the
| tainted flax.
|
| It's flax. Harvest it before it goes to seed, ret it, break
| it, scutch it, spin it, weave it, make it into expensive
| garments. Unless you eat your shirt it's going to be
| perfectly safe.
| lr4444lr wrote:
| And when said shirts are washed, the cadmium rich fibers in
| the effluent water go where?
| teractiveodular wrote:
| (2013)
| mhb wrote:
| et alia:
|
| https://hn.algolia.com/?q=things+i+won%27t+work+with+
| DylanSp wrote:
| https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-
| wo... links to all of Lowe's posts in this category. The How
| Not to Do It series is also great -
| https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/how-not-to-do-it.
| mech422 wrote:
| Derek Lowe's stuff is awesome - Probably the most famous
| 'stuff I won't work with' is 'sand won't save you this
| time' ...
|
| 1) https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/sand-won-t-
| save-yo...
|
| edit: full index here: https://www.science.org/topic/blog-
| category/things-i-wont-wo...
| brenns10 wrote:
| (warning: pedantic comment)
|
| "et alia" is used to refer to "the others (people)" whereas
| "et cetera" is used to refer to "the others (things)". So
| you'd use "et cetera" to refer to the other posts. But if you
| were writing a list of authors you might end with "et al." to
| indicate that there are more.
|
| I know correcting somebody's Latin usage is really pedantic
| even by HN's standards. I'm only saying it cause I find it
| interesting and want to share, not because I want to correct
| you :)
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Et_cetera
| GiovanniP wrote:
| "et alii" for people (masculine plural nominative)
|
| "et alia" for things (neutrum plural nominative)
|
| "et cetera" for things as well
| mhb wrote:
| Ah. Thank you.
| Ekaros wrote:
| Are dimethyls with wrong sort of metals all really nasty stuff?
| Just wondering as dimethylmercury is also nasty stuff.
| ta988 wrote:
| It seem so, but it is a bit more complex in reality
|
| https://pubs.acs.org/doi/10.1021/acs.organomet.7b00605
| zdragnar wrote:
| Methyl groups play heavily in organic chemistry. As an organic
| compound, it allows otherwise fairly inert metals to be easily
| absorbed into body tissues and interfere with the chemical
| processes therein.
|
| To take mercury for example, you can stick your hand in a vat
| of elemental mercury and be fine. A few drops of
| dimethylmercury on your skin can be fatal.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > A few drops of dimethylmercury on your skin can be fatal.
|
| Sounds like a state actor's weapon of choice ...
| Ekaros wrote:
| Only if your agents are ready to commit painful suicide...
| Dimethylmercury can pass through gloves...
| Bluestein wrote:
| Nasty stuff.-
| btilly wrote:
| My ex knew the woman who discovered that by accident.
| https://cen.acs.org/safety/lab-safety/25-years-Karen-
| Wetterh... has the story.
|
| A few drops on the outside of the latex gloves was enough
| to kill her. Maybe she would have survived if she'd
| changed the gloves immediately? Regardless, she didn't do
| that, and so didn't survive.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Worth noting is that it took almost a year for that
| exposure to kill her, and half that before they even
| realized something happened that day. From the article:
|
| _On Aug. 14, 1996, Karen Wetterhahn was exposed to
| dimethylmercury while making a standard for nuclear
| magnetic resonance studies related to DNA damage._
|
| _(...)_
|
| _It was 5 full months before the consequences of that
| spill became apparent. Wetterhahn developed stomach
| problems, then began having trouble walking and speaking
| clearly. A friend, nurse Cathy Johnson, recalls a lunch
| date in early January 1997 when she urged Wetterhahn to
| see a doctor._
|
| _Within a few weeks, Wetterhahn was in a coma. On June
| 8, 1997, she died. She was 48 years old._
|
| I always imagined all such nasty chemicals kill you in a
| matter of minutes to hours, days at the most. I never
| imagined they could turn you into a walking corpse. It's
| up there with Rabies.
| Anotheroneagain wrote:
| She would be fine if she ate brazil nuts. Mercury only
| hurts you by depleting selenium.
| btilly wrote:
| My first reaction to this was to get angry. If there was
| such a simple solution, wouldn't she still be alive?
|
| But, luckily, I hit Google first.
| https://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/publication/FS437 showed that
| selenium does protect against mercury. Even
| dimethylmercury. And https://www.webmd.com/diet/health-
| benefits-brazil-nuts shows that Brazil nuts are an
| excellent way to get selenium. In fact it is comparable
| to a supplement, and a sustained diet of 3 nuts per day
| is already in the toxic range. I had no idea.
|
| So it appears to be correct, there's a good chance that
| eating Brazil nuts could have saved her life!
| Bluestein wrote:
| That's incredible.-
|
| (Was going to say it was "nuts" but abstained :)
| astrange wrote:
| It's long acting and very obvious. The famous case of
| someone dying from a two-drop spill took a year after
| exposure IIRC.
| User23 wrote:
| Methylating is like acetylating. It's kind of a go-to thing
| to try in medicinal chemistry.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > kind of a go-to thing to try in medicinal chemistry.
|
| May I ask why?
| zdragnar wrote:
| Acetyl groups are made of carbonyl and methyl groups. To
| improve bioavailability of a compound, attempting to add
| on either a methyl or acetyl group may help.
|
| Depending on the compound, skipping this step may cause
| the compound to be relatively inert. This is why, for
| example, calcium carbonate is a poor source of calcium as
| a nutritional supplement, but calcium citrate is readily
| absorbed- the citrate itself is an organic compound, so
| the body more readily takes it up out of the digestive
| system and the calcium can be used.
| andrewflnr wrote:
| Maybe a dumb question, but from this should I conclude
| that calcium citrate does not fully dissociate in
| solution the way e.g. NaCl does? Because otherwise how
| would it matter what the counter-ion was for the calcium?
| Then again I've always been hazy on why ions seem to
| behave differently depending on what they originally
| dissolve from, so if there's something weird going on
| there I'd love to know about it.
| LM358 wrote:
| Chelation is the keyword you're looking for:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chelation
| monktastic1 wrote:
| Indeed. I am reminded of the sad and horrible story of
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
| culi wrote:
| Yeah I find this interesting too. A methyl group separates the
| street drug meth from the prescribed drug amphetamine. The main
| role that methyl group plays is the way it crosses the blood
| brain barrier. During the process of crossing the methyl group
| is lost. Which means with both meth and regular amphetamine the
| chemical that reaches your brain is the same.
|
| I wonder if the dimethyl plays the same role here. Allowing it
| to cross the blood brain barrier faster
| scotteric wrote:
| As an aside, methamphetamine is also a prescribed drug in the
| US, called Desoxyn.
| culi wrote:
| Fascinating. In ww2 the Allies used methamphetamine heavily
| to keep their soldiers awake and able to fight. When those
| soldiers got back they missed the drug and for a while it
| was something you could just buy at any old drug store
| lazide wrote:
| The Germans did it first and 'more better'. It was one of
| the forces behind the blitzkreig. Their brand name was
| 'Pervitin'. [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_policy_
| of_Nazi_Germany#....]
|
| "Drug use in the German military during World War II was
| actively encouraged and widespread, especially during the
| war's later stages as the Wehrmacht became depleted and
| increasingly dependent on youth as opposed to
| experience.[4]"
|
| A lot of things make more sense about WW2 if you realize
| most major combatants were on heavy duty drugs during
| large portions of it.
| abound wrote:
| From the article:
|
| > The general rule is, if you're looking for the worst organic
| derivatives of any metal, you should hop right on down to the
| methyl compounds.
| cperciva wrote:
| _[I]ts odor is variously described as "foul", "unpleasant",
| "metallic", "disagreeable", and (wait for it) "characteristic",
| which is an adjective that shows up often in the literature with
| regard to smells, and almost always makes a person want to punch
| whoever thought it was useful._
|
| No need to punch them; if someone has been exposed to enough
| dimethylcadmium to describe its odor as "characteristic" they
| probably don't have long to live...
| stavros wrote:
| I'm sure the author knows this, and wants to punch them anyway.
| gtmitchell wrote:
| A generation ago or two ago, it was common for chemists to use
| taste and smell as a tools for qualitative evaluation of
| chemical compounds.
|
| So older scientific literature is full of all sorts of
| knowledge that was obtained in ways that are shockingly unsafe
| by modern standards, including gems like the taste of all sorts
| of poisons and how large quantities of plutonium are warm to
| the touch.
| thrw9358767 wrote:
| A friend's dad recognised cyanide during a chemistry exam by
| tasting it. (He survived and passed the exam.)
|
| The task was to say what each of n substances given were in a
| short enough amount of time, filling out a report. I'm not
| sure if they still give cyanide to students during exams.
| That was communist Poland.
| cperciva wrote:
| He's lucky that he could smell it! About 1/3 of the
| population lack the gene -- including my grandfather, who
| discovered this when performing an industrial reaction with
| cyanides and being alerted by someone _at the other end of
| the room_ yelling that he could smell cyanide.
| adonovan wrote:
| Hydrogen sulfide generally repels people to a safe
| distance due to its strong smell of rotten eggs, but in
| very high doses, such as when the police open a car door
| after an H2S suicide within, it quickly disables that
| very sense of smell.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > He survived and passed the exam
|
| Talk about "for science" ...
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| I was just looking at
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK597858/ , a review of
| the effects of fluorine in various forms as administered in
| various ways.
|
| I was pretty surprised to see the experiments on human
| volunteers.
| StableAlkyne wrote:
| > older scientific literature is full of all sorts of
| knowledge that was obtained in ways that are shockingly
| unsafe by modern standards
|
| My favorite is there are old manuals that recommend smoking
| while working with cyanide. Allegedly it produces a very
| disagreeable flavor when you inhale the cyanide through the
| cigarette, so you get warning to get out of the area*
|
| This was before fume hoods were common, when you would most
| likely be doing this outside or next to a window
|
| * I have not tested this, and I don't know of anyone who has,
| so don't rely on what could be an old telephone game for
| chemical safety
| krisoft wrote:
| The Stern-Gerlach experiment is famous for many things. One
| of them is that the only reason the silver deposits could
| be seen were because the experimenters smoked cheap cigars
| with sulfur in them, which turned the deposited silver to
| black.
|
| "After venting to release the vacuum, Gerlach removed the
| detector flange. But he could see no trace of the silver
| atom beam and handed the flange to me. With Gerlach looking
| over my shoulder as I peered closely at the plate, we were
| surprised to see gradually emerge the trace of the beam....
| Finally we realized what [had happened]. I was then the
| equivalent of an assistant professor. My salary was too low
| to afford good cigars, so I smoked bad cigars. These had a
| lot of sulfur in them, so my breath on the plate turned the
| silver into silver sulfide, which is jet black, so easily
| visible. It was like developing a photographic film."
| Bluestein wrote:
| Imagine the quantity of sulfur he must have absorbed in
| order for his breath to have a high enough concentration
| ...
| refurb wrote:
| Even as a chemist today you get to recognize the smells of
| chemicals even if barely exposed.
|
| It's typically only the most toxic that you'd use such
| equipment to not be exposed at all (but then we tend to avoid
| those anyways).
|
| You start to recognize the smell of ethers like diethyl ether
| or tetrahydrofuran (which I love the smell of). Sulfides are
| obvious (smell terrible).
|
| I made a mistake a couple times smelling things I shouldn't.
|
| Once was diazomethane gas - a potent akylating agent and
| explosive. I instinctively put the roundbottom flask to my
| nose to smell, but realized after how dumb it was. No idea if
| i heavily alkylated my nasal passage epithelial cells or not,
| but no side effects.
|
| The other time was a brominated aryl compound similar to tear
| gas. That was amazingly painful and felt like getting wasabi
| up my nose despite there being almost nothing left in the
| flask.
|
| One time which wasn't intention was smelling CbzCl (benzyl
| chloroformate, a reagent used to add a protecting group to
| nitrogens). I didn't intentionall smell it, but measured it
| outside the fume hood in a syringe. It smells pretty awful,
| but what I realize is that the molecule must bind to your
| nasal passages (proteins have lots of nitrogens) because I
| could smell it for the next 24 hours. After smelling it that
| long, the smell now makes me nauseous pretty quickly.
| Ntrails wrote:
| A friend of mine works as a chemist in waste disposal and I
| reckon a shallow sniff is a pretty common first line tool
| for identification / confirmation. I doubt it is ideal, but
| nobody would lie too much about what is in that barrel
| right..?
| Bluestein wrote:
| > tetrahydrofuran (which I love the smell of).
|
| May I ask what it smells like?
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| "characteristic"? ;)
| Bluestein wrote:
| Well played.-
| _a_a_a_ wrote:
| Well played indeed, but from wiki
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tetrahydrofuran "Odor:
| Ether-like".
|
| As a side note, ether is a lovely smell diluted but
| inhaled concentrated (for recreational purposes - it's a
| bit like alcohol in effect) it's bloody brutal, burning
| your nose & lungs.
|
| (They used to be sweets in the UK called Victory V's
| which contained a very small amount of ether, and they
| were just lush. Bought some recently and found whatever
| additives that was had been removed, oh woe :) )
| refurb wrote:
| It would be hard to describe.
|
| It's a low boiling point oxygenated hydrocarbon solvent,
| so it smells like you'd expect - think things like
| rubbing alcohol, ethanol (vodka), paint thinner (the ones
| that have alcohols in them).
|
| Diethyl ether smells very "heavy", for lack of a better
| word, and pungent. It's almost overpowering, and can
| become unpleasant after a while.
|
| Tetrahydrofuran (which is just diethyl ether with both
| ends of the ethyl groups bonded to form a ring) has a
| "lighter" smell, isn't overpowering and smells "clean" to
| me. It's still a oxygenated solvent, so it's not pleasant
| like the smell of flowers or spices, but to me it's more
| similar to ethanol which is relatively pleasant.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Appreciate the detailed descriptions.-
|
| I am left wondering if anything approaching a "standard"
| exists for smells ...
|
| That would be one hard thing to provide standardized
| descriptions for - both qualitatively and quantifiably
| ...
|
| PS. I seem to recall someone somewhere had developed an
| "electronic nose" ...
|
| ... maybe that might be way in.-
| carlmr wrote:
| >I am left wondering if anything approaching a "standard"
| exists for smells ...
|
| You can buy tasting kits for whiskey or wine. They
| include individual scents like peaty, smokey, oaky,
| blackberry even some weird ones like band-aid. You can
| use them to train your nose to deconstruct the smell of
| whiskey or wine.
|
| It's really eye opening (or nose opening if you will).
| Since you might even find you suddenly agree with the
| tasting notes on the bottle.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Interesting. Also, if I may, it seems to me there's more
| _individual_ variation in "smell discernment" ability
| among individuals than there is for other senses.-
|
| ie. so called "super-noses" vs. "scent deaf" people.-
| Bluestein wrote:
| PS. Hyperosmic is the word I was looking for.-
| Aloha wrote:
| Sorta like fresh naphtha with the volatiles still in it,
| and everclear combined?
|
| That would smell sorta good, its a nice 'round' scent.
| euroderf wrote:
| As a kid I had a Lionel chemistry set. It had a chunk of
| sulfur that I lit up with a match. Then, curious, I took a
| deep snork.
|
| Mistake!
|
| Only a few years later in chem class did a teacher show how
| to use your hand to waft fumes from an open beaker or flask
| so that you can catch a tiny whiff.
| Bluestein wrote:
| ("Amd this, dear children is how we got psychedelics ..."
|
| I jest. I believe it was unwanted skin contact ...
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| If you are referring to LSD you do not jest. Albert Hoffman
| intentionally dosed himself, although he took what would
| now be considered 5-10 times a typical "dose".
|
| Also it does not readily absorb through the skin.
|
| Edit: https://web.archive.org/web/20080316074056/http://www
| .flashb...
|
| Apparently his first experience was accidental. His second
| experience was intentional, although still far higher then
| would be considered reasonable.
| Bluestein wrote:
| > Apparently his first experience was accidenta
|
| Thanks. That is what I seemed to recall.-
|
| Lucky he did not overdose ...
| MadnessASAP wrote:
| There's no known case of anyone dying from an LSD. Even
| after taking a few thousand times the typical amount
| (they thought it was cocaine). They did need
| hospitalization and would likely have died from
| aspirating their own vomit without it, however they all
| fully recovered within 48 hours.
|
| It's a pretty challenging drug to hurt yourself
| (physically/chemically) with.
|
| https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1129381/pdf/
| wes...
| rzzzt wrote:
| There is a story floating around of a repairman who
| accidentally exposed themselves to the substance while
| repairing a 60s modular synthesizer:
| https://cdm.link/2019/05/a-buchla-synth-repair-turned-
| into-a... (some broken embeds but the text is intact)
|
| The article does say that it might not have absorbed
| through skin but through a touch of the eye or mouth.
| samatman wrote:
| 250ug is a robust dose of LSD, but not an unreasonable
| one at all. Someone with some experience who takes that
| amount will appear to others as obviously tripping, but
| ordinarily they will still make sense, be able to
| converse, and so on.
|
| 100ug is the usual standard of measurement, as in a drop
| from a vial or a square of blotter, and plenty of
| enthusiasts like three of those when they partake. So
| more like 2.5X of a 'standard dose', and well within the
| typical range.
|
| I'm certain it was a remarkable experience for someone
| who had no idea whatsoever what they were getting into,
| though.
| JadeNB wrote:
| The author says just that in the previous sentences:
|
| > I'm saddened to report that the chemical literature contains
| descriptions of dimethylcadmium's smell. Whoever provided these
| reports was surely exposed to far more of the vapor than common
| sense would allow, because common sense would tell you to stay
| about a half mile upwind at all times.
| lifeisstillgood wrote:
| >>> Cadmium compounds in general have also been confirmed as
| carcinogenic, should you survive the initial exposure.
|
| I have heard of gallows humour, but its the gallows sarcasm that
| gets me :-)
| fortran77 wrote:
| Cadmium used to be all around us in Nickel-Cadmium batteries, and
| in Cadmium Sulfide "electric eye" photoresistors, that lower
| their resistance when exposed to light, and increase their
| resistance in darkness.
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Photoresistor).
|
| Its probably a good idea to avoid drilling, sanding, or filing
| things that may have Cadmium in them if you're dismantaling old
| electronics, lets you inhale it.
| rbanffy wrote:
| I can't believe I have to say this, but please don't eat
| batteries. ;-)
| wiml wrote:
| It's still reasonably common as an anti-corrosive plating on
| metal hardware.
| tim333 wrote:
| It sees to make one of the most cost effective solar cells but
| I think they only use them in commercial projects rather than
| on roofs.
| throw156754228 wrote:
| Great discussion following the article in the comments. Bunsen
| was a legend.
| Bluestein wrote:
| I noticed. Also a good read, the entire comment section :)
| gizajob wrote:
| Nice to see the word "floof" in a Science article
| fch42 wrote:
| I love reading the "things I won't work with" series ... a shame
| it's no longer being added to.
|
| Just curious: why did Derek Lowe stop writing these ?
| mattmaroon wrote:
| Perhaps he'll work with almost everything so he ran out.
| Bluestein wrote:
| Wikipedia seems to put 2017 as the stopping point for his
| collaboration with the publication. He went elsewhere.-
| DylanSp wrote:
| He's definitely still blogging on Science, he just hasn't
| posted any Things I Won't Work With entries in a few years.
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