In other news, post security-check airport janitorial closets and bathrooms contain tons of unguarded ammonia and bleach containers all over the place.
But, do they contain aquariums? That is the real question ;-)
World’s 2nd deadliest poison, in an aquarium store near you
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Re: World’s 2nd deadliest poison, in an aquarium store near you
#12In other news, post security-check airport janitorial closets and bathrooms contain tons of unguarded ammonia and bleach containers all over the place.
But, do they contain aquariums? That is the real question ;-)
Guilty of not reading the article; I thought it was going to be about cyanide (sold for for killing algea in aquariums) being readily available for terrorist misuse (probably from reading about the 80's Tylenol/cyanide scandals).
Re: World’s 2nd deadliest poison, in an aquarium store near you
#13Saltwater aquarium owner here-- I own many palytoxin soft corals and have never felt any danger whatsoever; however that doesn't mean you shouldn't be careful with these guys (zoanthids, palythoa, etc). I've never cut them open or anything, so I'm safe I think :)
You may be interested in this guy's comment ( http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gj74k/man_cleans_fi... ): "I was changing out my water and as being the usual idiot I am, I didn't condition or warm the water before dumping in 5 gallons of cold water into the tank. The zoos didn't like that and started squirting a long thin streamer of black tar stuff. I scooped it out with my hands to throw it away, a few minut…
WOW, I've never seen anything like that happen in my tank. I actually have moved them and got slimey stuff on my hands from them (as with all corals) and just washed my hands really well afterward. Irritating them is REALLY difficult to do though, they'll live through anything. Absolute beauties though, and well worth keeping :)
Re: World’s 2nd deadliest poison, in an aquarium store near you
#14So it seems like there's an obvious omission in this story... what's the deadliest poison?
Re: World’s 2nd deadliest poison, in an aquarium store near you
#15second deadlist in the natural world, not overall. a person who was poisoned had an opportunity to figure 'oh i dont feel well', went to a hospital, made it to the hospital, and survived the real deadly biological systems don't even give you a chance to ask if that is a missile coming over the hill
"a person who was poisoned had an opportunity to figure 'oh i dont feel well', went to a hospital, made it to the hospital, and survived" I am not sure what point you are trying to make with that sentence. That this proves it's not very toxic? We know how toxic it is. The LD-50 has been determined with some precision. What this would therefore prove was that his dose was low, which considering the suboptimal delivery…
OT: This led me to the LD-50 wiki page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose#Examples
Was very interesting to see Botox requiring 2300x a smaller dose than VX.
Re: World’s 2nd deadliest poison, in an aquarium store near you
#16Earlier quoted context omitted.
You may be interested in this guy's comment ( http://www.reddit.com/r/science/comments/gj74k/man_cleans_fi... ): "I was changing out my water and as being the usual idiot I am, I didn't condition or warm the water before dumping in 5 gallons of cold water into the tank. The zoos didn't like that and started squirting a long thin streamer of black tar stuff. I scooped it out with my hands to throw it away, a few minut…
WOW, I've never seen anything like that happen in my tank. I actually have moved them and got slimey stuff on my hands from them (as with all corals) and just washed my hands really well afterward. Irritating them is REALLY difficult to do though, they'll live through anything. Absolute beauties though, and well worth keeping :)
Not a saltwater aquarium owner myself, but given stories like this, I personally would not want to wear anything short of a spacesuit when the time comes to clean the tank.
Re: World’s 2nd deadliest poison, in an aquarium store near you
#17So it seems like there's an obvious omission in this story... what's the deadliest poison?
Palytoxin.
EDIT: Oh, the deadliest, not the second deadliest. Botulinum toxin, of course.
Re: World’s 2nd deadliest poison, in an aquarium store near you
#18second deadlist in the natural world, not overall. a person who was poisoned had an opportunity to figure 'oh i dont feel well', went to a hospital, made it to the hospital, and survived the real deadly biological systems don't even give you a chance to ask if that is a missile coming over the hill
>second deadlist in the natural world, not overall.
The deadliest "synthetic" poison with a known toxic level is polonium-210, used in the murder of Alexander Litivenko. It comes in third to palytoxin and botulinum toxin in potency.
Re: World’s 2nd deadliest poison, in an aquarium store near you
#19Marginally related, the case of Karen Wetterhahn: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
Wetterhahn, a specialist in toxic metals, was accidentally poisoned in her lab by a few drops of the toxic, colorless compound, which penetrated her protective glove... Wetterhahn recalled that she had spilled several drops of dimethylmercury from the tip of the pipette onto her latex gloved hand. Tests later showed that this can rapidly permeate different kinds of latex gloves and enter the skin within about 15 seconds
Re: World’s 2nd deadliest poison, in an aquarium store near you
#20I worked at an aquarium store (probably one of the ones mentioned in the story) for a long time, and was a pretty experienced and dedicated reefkeeper at my peak, and I never knew this.
This situation must be incredibly unlikely though because I've dealt with thousands of Zooanthids and hundreds of customers over the years I never had anything like this happen nor heard about it from anybody. However, I certainly wish I had known so I could have warned customers about the risks, because in the aquarium world Zooanthids are considered a great starter coral because they are very hardy and don't require much light.