Mercury and Arsenic poisoning
Everyone reacts differently
Sources
• Food
• Air
• Water
Food sources
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Seafood – seawater has low conc of Hg
Seafood – up to 1 ppm
Grass – does not accumulate Hg
Grazing animals – low accumulation
Environment
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Mercury(I), Hg22+
Mercury(II), Hg2+
Solubility, HgS
Organomercury
Mercury in the air
From Coal plants and waste incineration
Use of plants to detoxify soil
Other sources
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Dental fillings
Calomel, Hg2Cl2
Mercury spills in the laboratory
Medications
Medications
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Mercury with sugar – laxative
Calomel – skin rash and laxative
Mercury with chalk (grey) – laxative, syphilis
Mercury(II) cyanide – eyes
Mercury(II) iodide – ringworm, disinfectant
Mercury (II) nitrate – remove warts
Mercury(II) oxide - eyes
Biochemistry
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As liquid
Attaches to S of peptides
Attaches Na/K-ATPase – nerves, twitching
Kidneys, liver
Inhibits formation of myelin
Pink disease – coloring of fingers, toes, nose,
cheeks
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Mad hatters
Dentists
Detectives – use of grey dust for fingerprints
Mining of cinnabar (HgS)
Extract and purify gold (as an amalgam)
Lab equipment – thermometers, barometers,
switches, explosives, batteries
• Chlor-alkali plants
Organomercury
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Frankland labs (1865) – 10 days, 1 year
Arthur H (1940) – survived
Two secretaries (1942)
Karen Wetterhahn (1997) - ~1 month
Autism and thimerosal
Fish – Minamata disease
Chelating agents
As a poison
• Mercury cyanide
• Calomel
• Since all react differently, hard to determine
the lethal dose
Berlin - Prosecutors in Berlin suspended investigations on Tuesday (Jan 4, 2011) into a
suspected mercury poisoning attack on a Russian dissident couple staying in Germany.
There were no signs that the couple were deliberately poisoned during their stay, investigators
said, adding however that they could not be sure what had previously happened to the couple
in Russia.
Prosecutors also said they could not rule out 'accidental self- contamination.'
The former KGB officer and his wife had been in hiding for several months in Berlin, German
daily Bild was due to report in its Wednesday edition.
The man, who worked as a journalist in Moscow, reportedly feared that former secret service
colleagues wanted to poison him.
Media reported that the couple, identified by Focus news magazine as Viktor and Marina
Kalashnikov, were fierce critics of the government in Moscow.
Tests on them conducted at Berlin's Charite hospital had revealed 53.7 micrograms of mercury
per litre in Viktor's blood, and 56 in Marina's. The usual level is between 1-3 microgram per
litre.
The couple subsequently contacted the police, and an inquiry was launched in late December.
Mercury poisoning can lead to kidney failure and speech impediments, among other things.
One rainy evening in the gold mining city of Segovia in northeastern Colombia, José Leonardo
Atehortua was working late at the refinery — or entable — where miners bring their ores to be
processed. Atehortua entered the cramped, concrete room and began his labor — roasting balls of
amalgam composed of equal parts gold and mercury, an ancient process used to separate one of
the world’s most valuable elements from one of the most toxic.
The next thing Atehortua remembers it was morning. He wanted to rise to his feet, to say
something, but when he tried to speak saliva poured uncontrollably over his lips and down his
chin. He had tunnel vision. He was unable to move his eyes. His limbs were stiff as a plank. He was
lying on a cot in the entable surrounded by men saying “José está azogado” — Jose is mercuried.
The mercury poisoning of Atehortua reflects a growing threat in Colombia and other parts of the
world as small-scale gold mining expands in response to rising gold prices. Gold and mercury are
interdependent commodities. When the price of gold increases — as it has since 2002 — so does
mercury pollution. The source of this pollution is a little known but widely practiced variety of
small-scale gold mining, found throughout rural districts of the developing world.
To separate precious gold from common stones, small-scale miners cart their ore to town, where it
is mixed with mercury in cylindrical mills filled with steel balls that grind the ore into a fine flour.
Mercury and gold bind as one, until, sundered by fire, the more volatile mercury is vaporized from
the elemental union. The result, in backwater towns like Segovia, can be the exposure of large
numbers of people to high levels of mercury vapor, which, in extreme cases like Atehortua’s, can
lead to life-threatening mercury poisoning.
Hilary Swank has revealed that she suffered
mercury poisoning from eating too much fish
whilst trying to bulk up for her role in Million
Dollar Baby.
The 36-year-old Oscar winner said that it took
her 'years' to get her health back following her
illness in 2004. She had to resort to a highprotein diet in a bid to gain weight and build
strength for her role as a female boxer.
She explained to You magazine, 'I put on 19
pounds of muscle: I was 29, I was a vegetarian
and suddenly I was eating so much fish that I
got elevated mercury problems. It plagued me
for a couple of years after that movie.
Arsenic – first discovered about 1250 AD but had been used as a
poison for centuries back to the Romans
Was used as a green dye (Paris green), found in shellfish, seawater,
When ingested – vomiting, diarrhea,
Peppermint lozenges was mistaken for calcium sulfate which was being
substituted for sugar (1858)
Beer containing arsenic (1900)
Baby powder (1952) substituted for zinc oxide
Arsenic eaters (1800) in the Alps between Austria and Hungary
Orpiment (As2S3) and realgar (As4S4)
As the symptoms of arsenic poisoning were somewhat ill-defined, it was
frequently used for murder until the advent of the Marsh test, a sensitive
chemical test for its presence. Its use by the ruling class to murder one another
and its potency and discreetness, arsenic has been called the Poison of Kings
and the King of Poisons.
During the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries, a number of arsenic compounds
have been used as medicines, including arsphenamine (neosalvarsan) indicated
for syphilis. Arsenic trioxide has been used in a variety of ways over the past
500 years, but most commonly in the treatment of cancer.
The high affinity of arsenic(III) oxides for thiols is usually assigned as the cause
of the high toxicity. Thiols, in the form of cysteine residues, are situated at the
active sites of many important enzymes.
Arsenic and many of its compounds are especially potent poisons. Many water
supplies close to mines are contaminated by these poisons. Arsenic disrupts
ATP production through several mechanisms. At the level of the citric acid
cycle, arsenic inhibits lipoic acid, which is a cofactor for pyruvate
dehydrogenase; and by competing with phosphate it uncouples oxidative
phosphorylation, thus inhibiting energy-linked reduction of NAD+,
mitochondrial respiration and ATP synthesis.
Hyoscine (scopolamine)
• Plant sources (an alkaloid) – deadly
nightshade, henbane, jimsonweed, mandrake
• Hamlet – ghost of Hamlet’s father tells of
being poisoned by the uncle pouring henbane
in his ear.
• Christie – “Black Coffee”
• Dr. Crippen and Belle Elmore (1910)
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Heroin is mixed ("cut") frequently with other substances primarily to increase its weight for retail
sale (e.g., mannitol and starch) and to add pharmacologic effects (e.g., dextromethorphan and
lidocaine). During 1995 and 1996, health departments and poison-control centers in New York City
(NYC); Newark, New Jersey; Philadelphia; and Baltimore reported at least 325 cases of drug
overdoses requiring medical treatment in persons who had used "street drugs" sold as heroin
that probably also contained scopolamine, an anticholinergic drug. This report summarizes the
clinical and epidemiologic features of these cases, which represent a new type of drug overdose.
New York City
On March 16, 1995, eight persons were treated in the emergency department (ED) of a Bronx
hospital for acute onset of agitation and hallucinations approximately 1 hour after "snorting"
heroin. On physical examination, all these persons had clinical manifestations of anticholinergic
toxicity (i.e., tachycardia, mild hypertension, dilated pupils, dry skin and mucous membranes, and
diminished or absent bowel sounds); five had urinary retention. All were initially lethargic and
became agitated and combative after emergency medical service (EMS) personnel treated them
with parenteral naloxone, which is routinely used for suspected heroin overdose to reverse the
toxic effects of opioids (e.g., coma and respiratory depression). All patients received diazepam or
lorazepam for sedation, and signs and symptoms resolved during the next 12-24 hours.
• LH, a 76-year-old Caucasian male, ingested 3 teaspoons (15 mL) of a
homemade wine over a 1-h period and became ill. Approximately 1.5 h
later, he was taken to the emergency room of a local hospital with
symptoms of respiratory distress and weakness. The plant used in making
the wine was Angel's trumpet (Datura suaveolens), which reportedly
contains varying amounts of scopolamine and atropine. A sample of the
wine was collected and analyzed for these two compounds by reversedphase HPLC chromatography using 97% methanol-3% deionized water. The
filtered wine contained an estimated 29 mg scopolamine/mL, which
produced a total ingested dose of 435 mg. No atropine was detected. The
scopolamine was confirmed by TLC. An oral dose of 50 mg of atropine
sulfate in humans has been reported fatal, but there is no reported fatal
dose for scopolamine. The alcohol content and 3.8 pH of the homemade
wine may have increased the extraction of this compound from the plant
material, and the wine fermentation process may have concentrated the
original extract
Ricin
• Extracted from the castor bean(pulp from 8
beans is toxic)
• LD50 of 22 mcg /kg injected or inhaled, 22
mg/kg if taken orally
• Inhibits protein synthesis
• Is a globular “protein” – 2 chains
Chemical warfare / poisonings
• KGB – Markov, pellet “fired” from special
umbrella – 3 days
• Mettetal
• Was found in the senate office building in
Washington