From: Katharine Thayer (kthayer@pacifier.com)
Date: 02/23/03-05:46:11 AM Z
pete wrote:
>
> We in the Uk use a diluted version of this acid 28% on our fish and chips
> ie, vinegar %-<.
Not to pick on Pete, Pete's jest, or acetic acid in particular, but to
make a general comment in response to some posts that have seemed to
imply that if you can eat something how dangerous could it be? which I
think require a response even though I swore I was out of this debate:
There are very few substances that as substances in and of themselves
are toxic in small amounts, but as my brother in law the toxicologist
likes to say, "It's the dose that makes the poison." What's more, the
danger of most of our chemicals isn't from eating them (though I
wouldn't recommend it) but from contacting them in other ways such as
through the skin or lungs, and the danger isn't always from poisoning
but can be from burns or damage to the breathing passages. Acetic acid
may be one of the less reactive of the acids, but just because in
diluted form we can eat it on fish and chips, doesn't mean that glacial
acetic acid is as safe to handle or drink as household vinegar.
In the same vein, I think I heard someone on this list say a while back
that because dichromates are present in the body and in the diet, any
concern about the safety of dichromates is unreasonable. And then there
was a post this morning that suggested, perhaps in jest, that
photochemicals are no more dangerous than red wine and some other food
item. These comments, even in jest aren't helpful to the debate and if
not in jest, are a measure of the ignorance that exists on the list
about chemical safety and point out how important it is to have some
kind of central information available. For most of our chemicals, as I
mentioned above, the danger isn't so much from potentially ingesting
them but from breathing the fumes, from absorbing the solution through
the skin, from burns, from improper handling or mixing, and other
non-ingestion issues, and it's important I think to know what the danger
is for each chemical, so that precautions can be taken.
Knowledge is power, and the more knowledge you have, the better you can
protect yourself, without being either irresponsibly cavalier, or so
overcautious you are afraid to do anything. There is a middle road of
sensible guidelines for handling chemicals safely, and I think we can
find it if we work together in good faith to do that.
This is a bit off the subject, but relates to "the dose makes the
poison": I heard a fascinating talk this week by the state medical
examiner for a nearby state. She said that all over the US, medical
examiners are seeing a sudden rise in accidental deaths from methadone
overdoses. It turns out that doctors, concerned about the illicit use
and abuse of Oxycontin, have started prescribing methadone instead of
Oxycontin for intractable pain. The problem is that doctors don't always
understand that the dosage of methadone has to be adjusted over time,
because if it's not, it builds up to toxic levels in the system and
eventually kills the patient, so people are being inadvertently killed
by a drug prescribed by their doctors, taken at the dosage prescribed.
Katharine Thayer
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