From: Clay (wcharmon@wt.net)
Date: 02/23/03-03:03:02 PM Z
Katherine:
I'm the dufus who made the tonque-i- cheek jest about red wine. Of
course you are correct - it's the dosage that matters. But my point is
there seems to be precious little 'middle ground' between hysterical
fear of anything 'chemical' and blithe disregard of everything [e.g. "I
used to play with mercury when I was a kid, and it didn't hurt me a
bit."]. Dick Arentz uses the phrase 'reasonable and prudent use' to
describe the frame of mind that we all probably should maintain in our
photographic practice.
And while we're talking about medicine and dosages and so forth, it is
also prudent to keep in mind that personal genetics will play a large
role in how susceptible people may be to certain chemicals. Just think
about poison ivy: some people (like my father) could roll in the stuff
with nary a problem, while if I look at it cross-ways, I get a rash(
like my mother). I think metol sensitivity may fall in the same
category of chemical irritants. Some are affected, some aren't.
But I still like red wine.
Clay
On Sunday, February 23, 2003, at 05:46 AM, Katharine Thayer wrote:
> 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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