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Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT

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Re: Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT

#61

Post by atmavatar »

ac29 wrote: post #56
recursivecaveat wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Less than 0.1 mL is capable of inducing severe mercury poisoning resulting in death Holy hell. I would've have believed it was possible for a non-biological substance to be so toxic.

the methyl groups make it organic chemistry (and dangerous), elemental mercury is fairly safe

There was a time not so long ago when it was common for chemistry teachers to show off pools of mercury in their bare hands.

By the time I first took chemistry classes, though, that practice had stopped, less out of concern of exposure to liquid mercury and more for accidental exposure to gaseous forms due to spills.

Re: Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT

#62

Post by rdtsc »

kylepdm wrote: post #29
nirse wrote: post #13

Derek Lowe mentions dimethyl mercury as the first substance that's not worth the risk: https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/a-risk-not-worth-taki...

His "Things I Won't Work With" series on Science ( https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-wo... ) is fun to read. The link in the article itself now unfortunately just points to the science.org homepage so you have to do some clicking around to get to this blog series.

From the link:

> One problem with this subject is that it tends to lead to bragging contests about who has run the most hazardous reactions. But think about it: if these reactions have all been run for good reasons with the best protective equipment there is less to brag about. And if they haven’t, then the discussion turns into figuring out who has been the biggest fool

I suspect the answer is "bragging rights" in this case.

Re: Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT

#63

Post by trelane »

thot_experiment wrote: post #47
fortenforge wrote: post #26

Note that it seems increasingly unlikely that it was actually synthesized. > Emerging information calls into question whether this compound was in fact synthesized. > while the student remains under medical supervision, their initial blood test result, which was received today, shows no sign of exposure to mercury. Taken from https://emergency.mit.edu/

Imagine thinking you'd killed yourself, and then breathing the intense sigh of relief when you realize you're bad at chemistry and you didn't manage to synthesize the compound correctly.

The student could have just made it all up for some reason too.

Re: Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT

#64

Post by willis936 »

weberer wrote: post #52
peri-cl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deleted post was a "Dear Colleagues" letter written by an MIT chemistry faculty member. It's the same letter posted here: https://old.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/1w1ukrv/mit_studen... ( "A message sent out from the chair of the department of chemistry..." )

>Log in to use old Reddit >To keep Reddit safe, accounts are required to access old Reddit. God, I hate that horrible website. How does this keep people "safe"

Legend has it that shareholders are people. None can prove it though.

Re: Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT

#65

Post by willis936 »

philipkglass wrote: post #6
ggm wrote: post #5

Why were they working with an unauthorised potent neurotoxin? MIT didn't "permit" this, although you could ask how student supervision allows it to arise. Is there some interesting aspect which danger aside might motivate this or was it just a dick move? Were they possibly motivated for bad reasons, seeking to commit harm?

Dimethylmercury is (or was, at least historically) used as a reference material for nuclear magnetic resonance (a common analytical method used in chemistry): https://sites.northwestern.edu/ohalloran/199hg-nmr-standards... This MIT incident was in a chemistry building that has been in use since 1970, so it could have been accidental release of an old, unused container or sample tube of the material.

The synthesis attempt was not for this. It's unclear what they were attempting and it's impossible that they didn't know the stakes. Their lab develops fundamental organic methods.

Re: Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT

#66

Post by idnexjwnfodnn »

idnexjwnfodnn wrote: post #50
gavinward wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think Hydrofluoric acid is probably the substance you're describing which leaches the calcium out of your bones. It will certainly burn you too though. It's a common byproduct from heating fluorinated gases and is sometimes used in its own right for wet etching. As an aside, I love it when they tell you in the safety WBT what the highly toxic gas smells like.

Reminds me of something from chemistry class but I can"t remember exactly what it was (this was several decades ago now), I think it was sometimes used for etching glass, but if it got into your body -- I'm not sure if getting it just on your skin was necessarily a lethal hazard -- it would leech the calcium from your bones and was considered an especially nasty way to go. Our prof was helping her father in law clean…

Sorry I believe it was copper etching maybe, probably not glass. Been a while...

Re: Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT

#67

Post by psd1 »

SoftTalker wrote: post #54
peri-cl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deleted post was a "Dear Colleagues" letter written by an MIT chemistry faculty member. It's the same letter posted here: https://old.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/1w1ukrv/mit_studen... ( "A message sent out from the chair of the department of chemistry..." )

Sadly old.reddit.com has started requiring a login now. It worked for me up until today. Another site off the reading list, unless someone knows a workaround (I tried deleting cookies).

"Old reddit redirect" extension for firefox. If you use chrome, don't.

Re: Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT

#68

Post by psd1 »

weberer wrote: post #52
peri-cl wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The deleted post was a "Dear Colleagues" letter written by an MIT chemistry faculty member. It's the same letter posted here: https://old.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/1w1ukrv/mit_studen... ( "A message sent out from the chair of the department of chemistry..." )

>Log in to use old Reddit >To keep Reddit safe, accounts are required to access old Reddit. God, I hate that horrible website. How does this keep people "safe"

"Old reddit redirect" extension for firefox.

Re: Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT

#69

Post by tbrownaw »

idnexjwnfodnn wrote: post #66
idnexjwnfodnn wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reminds me of something from chemistry class but I can"t remember exactly what it was (this was several decades ago now), I think it was sometimes used for etching glass, but if it got into your body -- I'm not sure if getting it just on your skin was necessarily a lethal hazard -- it would leech the calcium from your bones and was considered an especially nasty way to go. Our prof was helping her father in law clean…

Sorry I believe it was copper etching maybe, probably not glass. Been a while...

I'd think copper would mean ferric chloride, which isn't that bad.

Re: Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT

#70

Post by mortenjorck »

fortenforge wrote: post #26

Note that it seems increasingly unlikely that it was actually synthesized. > Emerging information calls into question whether this compound was in fact synthesized. > while the student remains under medical supervision, their initial blood test result, which was received today, shows no sign of exposure to mercury. Taken from https://emergency.mit.edu/

Plausible scenario from a comment in the science.org post linked in another thread:

> If the MIT student was doing some work with reactive stuff and mercury and got an unknown result well outside expectations out of the output they were expecting i can see them struggling through working out what it could be, coming to the conclusion Dimethylmercury was possibble as an accidental side product of what went wrong, and just pulling all the emergency handles to be safe. Given how nasty that stuff is that is exactly the kind of reaction to such a scenario you'd want someone to have.

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