Toxicologist Answers More Poison Questions From Twitter | Tech Support | WIRED

i'm anne chappelle i'm a board-certified toxicologist and i'm here today to answer your questions from twitter this is poison support [Music] first up we have a question from kooby liken dude what makes poison poisonous well a poison is a substance that can do damage to any living organism or to the environment but it's really all about the dose low dose less effects high dose generally higher effects if you drank six liters of water that probably could kill you how about 118 cups of coffee in a row or 75 espressos that would give you an overdose of caffeine something else that could kill you right on your table 225 grams of salt there's a lot of things that you might not think are poisonous but in the right dose they most definitely are youngin wtf is sun poisoning i thought it was just called sunburn both sun poisoning and sunburn are both caused by overexposure to uv rays a severe sunburn becomes sun poisoning when it moves from just that red hot rash to blisters feeling like you have the flu dizzy or nauseous sun poisoning is your body's immune reaction to all of that sun damage so what do you do if you have either of those things make sure you drink lots and lots of water that sun damage will dehydrate you and dehydration is the cause of a whole lot of other problems stay out of the sun apply cool not icy cold compresses on your skin take an over the counter anti-inflammatory agent as well walking daddy so if one happened to smash a mercury thermometer and then happen to spend an hour forensically gathering tiny dots of quicksilver from the floor how would one happen to safely dispose of the evidence asking for a friend it is very very important that you are careful and complete in how you actually clean up this spill mercury can vaporize get into the air and you can breathe it so you want to see if you can have your windows open please don't touch it i know it's fun to let it play in your hand but you can't do that anymore so wear some gloves be very careful use duct tape to kind of pound on the ground to clean it up you can use a damp paper towels all of those things those cleaning supplies everything put into some kind of giant ziploc type bag and then you're going to have to wait until you have a hazardous waste collection day and dispose of it properly do not clean up spilled mercury with the vacuum cleaner mercury is very very dangerous for the environment and it's also not great for you either from rick nowak what is the most poisonous mushroom it's a poisonous mushroom does it have to have the most poisonous well if you really want to know it's probably the death cap mushroom within 6 to 12 hours you are in incredible pain nausea vomiting violent chills muscle contractions all of these nasty things and eventually if the dose was tight enough you end up having liver failure multiple organ failure and death from crimson sexta i've been trying for so long to explain the difference between venom and poison when it comes to snakes to my friends help the difference really is how that poison is delivered to the person a poison is administered or you're exposed to it via breathing or touching it or ingesting it venom that is also a poison but it's how you get that poison that's more of a sting or a bite so it's more active you eat a frog that's a poison you get bit by a copperhead snake that's a venomous attack at wildlife defense asks what is compound 1080 compound 1080 is an extremely potent predicide predicide is designed to kill predators so if you've got sheep and goats in your field and you've got a problem with coyotes well this is what you would use because compound 1080 is so potent they have a special way to administer it to avoid killing broad numbers of animals in your field there's a collar that they put around the neck so it's got a collar with a reservoir of the 1080 right along the neck so that when the coyote comes along and grabs the neck it bites into that reservoir and is immediately poisoned and dies lightscapes asks what is a toxicologist study just like there's different kinds of doctors there's lots of different kinds of toxicologists i am an occupational toxicologist and my job is to look at all the things that could be in a workplace food toxicologists for example they work to make sure our food supply is safe i even know a toxicologist that works at a winery from bluebell bats google search how to detect poison unfortunately to detect a poison i'm going to need to have a little bit more information if the lead singer is brett michaels then i'm sure it is poison if it's just bad medicine sorry that's bon jovi if it's party poison that's my chemical romance caitlyn rebecca asks so is alcohol actually poison or anything can be a poison in the right dose and alcohol is definitely a poison if you drink too much first of all alcohol can impair your central nervous system so that can slow your breathing a byproduct of alcohol metabolism is the formation of acetaldehyde acetaldehyde is a chemical that really likes to damage parts of your liver long term that slow exposure over time to alcohol and its metabolites can result in cirrhosis and other kinds of liver damage eventually leading to potentially liver cancer from lk juvenju 75 mad hatters were mad because of the lead mercury anybody know why i do it was mercury mercury was used to help make the different skins they used for hats helped that firm mat really well it also toughened up the fibers and was made of very high quality felt that was going to be used in the hat part of the hat making process is that you steam the hat that releases all of that mercury into the air and then they briefed it they said that they were mad hatters it's because of many of the psychological symptoms that the over exposure to the mercury caused hallucinations dizziness tremors you think of mad hatters actually as something being from victorian times but actually it wasn't until 1940s that in the united states the governor of connecticut banned the use of mercury in hats appypaw asks how long does poison take to work some poisons can make you sick right after you ingest breathe or touch it other poisons those can take a lifetime to really manifest in its adverse effects something like cyanide you've seen them eat those poison pills in movies that definitely can kill you within a few minutes cyanide is a very toxic chemical and it is extremely potent when you get exposed to cyanide it quickly enters your cell and stops your cell's ability to actually make energy you see the convulsions you have a heart attack you have different problems within your heart and it's all because cyanide is really good about getting in your body and inside those cells where it irreversibly stops all energy production let's take another example like e coli contaminated lettuce you eat your sandwich you're happy and then that bacteria produces a toxin that slowly gets released and absorbed into your gut and into the rest of your body so it takes a few days often for e coli to really start to exert its adverse effect that's one of the reasons why food poisoning is so difficult to diagnose you have to go back to food that you ate maybe three or four days ago and i can't even remember what i had for breakfast 96 barry asks if a poison expires will it still be poisonous or will it not actually it really depends some drugs some pesticides some chemicals that are poisons they break down very readily when they're exposed to air moisture some poisons are what i would consider shelf stable it doesn't matter how long that they sit around they're still going to be just as potent as the day they came out of the factory a2 pathways media asks what are the long-term effects of lead poisoning serious the problem with lead is that it is stored in your bones as you age and you naturally lose bone density lead is slowly released a young child who happens to ingest lead paint they're going to be seen with lower iq potentially hearing problems in adults a lot of times the adverse effects most associated with lead exposure is high blood pressure and what happens when you have constant high blood pressure you're at higher risk for stroke and heart attack the larson asks what is the deadliest poison clostridium botulinum bacteria these are usually happy little microbes that live in soil when they are deprived of oxygen they produce the world's most deadliest toxin botulinum you can find botulism toxin in expired food containers don't eat those botulism toxin causes an inhibition of the release of acetylcholine as diagrammed here so if you cannot release acetylcholine then you can't have your muscles contract then you really can't breathe and your heart won't work correctly but there's actually an upside to botulism toxin it's called botox there are lots of people that really don't want certain muscles in their face to contract anymore they go to the doctor and they get an injection of botox you can also use botulism toxin to treat several other kinds of conditions like migraines certain rapid blinking diseases you can also get botox injections to stop excessive sweating chae young slave asked the question how does overdosing on pills actually work genuinely curious an overdose doesn't necessarily mean death an overdose means that you've absolutely taken too much of that particular medicine and that could result in adverse effects that are detrimental to life and health another way that you can overdose results from a combination maybe of different drugs that you normally would take separately that when combined they all have the same intended effect and then that overwhelms your body and that can be what kills you here's another example you build up tolerance for a certain drug for a while and then you stop taking it your body goes back to the pre levels of where how it was able to metabolize it and then all of a sudden you take another high dose thinking hey that's the dose i used to take and that throws you into an overdose okay adele pras how fast does hemlock work i'm thinking i should stockpile brompton's cocktails in the 1930s a brompton cocktail was commonly given to terminally ill people it was this crazy mixture of morphine cocaine alcohol anti-nausea agents as well as tranquilizers the goal of a brompton cocktail was to relieve pain and to help you be awake enough so that you could talk to your friends when they came to visit you on your deathbed you also asked about hemlock hemlock is a plant that the leaves and especially the roots are very very poisonous so you really wouldn't take a brompton cocktail and add some hemlock to it because the brompton cocktail was really made not to help you die but to help you be happy and pain-free when your friends came to visit nyx blue pen y'all how poisonous is pen ink it isn't very toxic according to the world health organization ballpoint pens felt tip pens fountain pens all of them do not contain enough toxic ingredients even if you sucked on them to cause serious adverse effects however you might have a blue tongue question from sports pundit anybody ever had rebound poison ivy rash no just me perfect this is not uncommon if you have a bad poison ivy rash sometimes the doctor will give you an injection of steroids to help calm your immune system down so that the rash can go away if that medicine wears off before you're fully healed then you can get what they call a rebound rash that's all the questions i could find on twitter so until next time this is anne chappelle with poison support [Music]

Channel: WIRED

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Keywords: anne chappelle, anne chappelle wired, innovation, ott tech support, poison expert, poison explained, poison questions, poison support wired, poison tech support, poison wired, questions poison, science & technology, toxicologist, toxicologist answers questions, toxicologist interview, toxicologist poison, toxicologist poison control, toxicologist questions, toxicologist wired, wired, wired poison

Id: R7qsau3X6Ks

Length: 14min 14sec (854 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 14 2022