Russians and heavy metal poisoning
Posted by Nathaniel.
Yeah, heavy metals are great for killing off critics of the state, but really, in order for them to be effective, you can’t use them every week. People do catch on. Plus, you can always push reporters out a window or shoot them.
Today’s case though involves a Russian-American doctor and her daughter in Moscow for a wedding. It turns out now that they’ve both tested positive for thallium poisoning.
The thing that I find really interesting is that the treatment for thallium poisoning is paint. You take oral doses of Prussian blue which is a really nice dark blue pigment. It has some cool chemical properties that allow it to sequester thallium and cesium in the body.
March 7th, 2007 at 12:44 pm Using
Two more things.
Russia really does have some horrible heavy metal bands. So bad that they probably could poison you.
The thing that I find really interesting about the Prussian blue treatment is how exactly it gets excreted from the body. I assume it’s not like the red color from beets which gets out in urine since Prussian blue is basically insolluable. Must be that you just have blue poos.
March 7th, 2007 at 6:04 pm Using
blue poo would be rather surprising. or rather, I guess you’d know it’s coming, but still pretty weird.
additionally, radioactive poisoning is gross. too bad we (America) have no moral authority to exert, ‘cuz Putin actually makes Bush look very tolerant.
March 7th, 2007 at 6:08 pm Using
Well, it doesn’t sound like this was radioactive thallium, just regular thallium. I haven’t figured out exactly how it poisons you either, something to do with binding to all your potassium. Maybe Tim can weigh in on that one once he gets done with his talk.
March 7th, 2007 at 6:10 pm Using
Oh, and the issue that I have with blue poos is that I’m imaging that it would have the consistency of oil paint and be very hard to wipe away… so you’d have miles of blue streaked toilet paper.
it’s not a pretty image.
March 7th, 2007 at 6:21 pm Using
off the top of my head, I believe the toxicity isn’t due to potassium binding but instead that it mimics potassium (and other alkilis) enough to travel via K-uptake pathways, serving to (a) go places it oughtn’t and (b) keep potassium from going/functioning where it should, in addition to screwing up sulphur-based proteins. Tim has more chemistry knowledge though, so it’s good to know more.
I think thallium was used for hair-removal before they figured out that was abad idea? ugh.