“The Dose Makes the Poison”

Once upon a time anyone with a basic education learned that the dose makes the poison. That is, no matter how harmless a chemical may seem, at high enough levels of consumption it becomes toxic. (And the corollary is one should not be too concerned about highly toxic chemicals if they are in sufficiently tiny amounts).
Alas, that lesson appears to have been learned too late for this unfortunate woman who died in a water drinking contest.
Yes, as a matter of fact, there is a toxic dose for water.
Update: I would be remiss in my duties if I didn’t take this opportunity to link to the valuable Dihydrogen Monoxide Research Division, an organization at the forefront of publicizing these sorts of dangers.

24 Replies to ““The Dose Makes the Poison””

T-shirt $18.00
Confused tree huggers priceless

EARTH FIRST !!
We’ll log the other planets later.

Who knew?!

There’s actually people out there who are addicted to water. They’ve figured out that if you drink enough water to significantly reduce the salt content in your body, it has a narcotic effect. Never heard of anyone dying from it yet, but it’s not surprising.

Thousands of arts students are now writing their MP’s.

A hiking buddy of mine who does triatholons (the real ones not the fun run-ized versions) tells me that most people who drop out of a full triatholon do so because they’ve let themselves get run down on salt.
The deaths ascribed to ecstacy presumably happened because of water poisioning. Pillheads were told to drink lots of water otherwise the drug might kill them, it turns out they got some bad advice.

Penn and Teller get activists to sign a petition banning dihydrogen monoxide: youtube.com/watch?v=yi3erdgVVTw

Be sure to look in the Press Section of the dihydrogen monoxide link … there are Dj’s that got suspended for letting the scientific aware general population know that this is being piped into their homes.

That link to DHD is hilarious. After claiming to be an unbiased clearing house of information, they list this among the uses of DHD:
by members of Congress who are under investigation for financial corruption and inappropriate IM behavior,
DHD leads people to use instant messaging inappropriately. Huh. I hope that’s on the packaging.

OT but;
“Barzan Ibrahim, Saddam’s half brother and former intelligence chief, and Awad Hamed al-Bandar were hanged at dawn on Monday, said Munqith al-Faroon.” confirmation to follow.
As head of Iraq’s dreaded Mukhabarat intelligence service for Saddam, Ibrahim was likely involved in the torture and deaths of thousands of Iraqis.
In addition, he targeted regime opponents abroad for assassination and purged those suspected of disloyalty from the armed forces.
Ibrahim became Iraq’s representative to the United Nations in Geneva in 1989. He even sat on the UN’s human rights committee at one point.
I guess Allah will have to find another 144 virgins. Got to be running out soon, of course the religious police could always burn down a school and chase the girls back inside. May you both have a pineapple day!

Yeah that killed her. There’s a reason for things like Gatorade, which btw can kill you too.

Just say “no” to HDD; and “yes” to EtOH!

“There is a toxic dose for water.”
Especially if you take it in through your nose…

Last year I pointed out the DMHO site to my 14 year-old granddaughter ans asked her if she would take to school and get her teach’s opinion. Needless to say, the results were “simply Hilarious” as she said, until her science teach spoilled all the fun and hand wringing by the socialists when she pointed out exactly what DHMO was. Some people have no sense of ha-ha.

Earth First! We’ll MINE the Other Planets Later..T-shirt of the Geo-Physics faculty U of M.
Poisonous water? A pub goer in LA dropped dead after downing 3 $1 pitchers of “happy Hour” beer…..it was American draft and he died of water intoxication ….NOT Alcohol!
True Story!

some woman choked to death last autumn at a country fair here in the biggest hick town on the continent from a marshmallow stuffing contest.

This story, especially as the mother of two young women, scares me. The nonsense that goes on these days: water drinking contests, marshmallow stuffing contests, beer drinking contests, etc.
The problem is that a) the sponsors of the contests seem to have no idea of the possible dangers involved and b) neither do the kids involved, who already think they’re immortal.
I have been accused of being “overly protective” of my kids (two years on the Caribbean coast when my kids were little and having done a few really crazy things when I was in my twenties might account for some of my concerns for my daughters), but at least they’re still alive and more than aware of the many dangers lurking out there.
I’m more than a little horrified by the cavalier attitudes of a lot of people towards casual drug-taking and sex and binge drinking in our young people and wonder how parents can be so naive as to not know what kinds of things are going on in our young people’s lives.
Many of our young people seem to be in free-fall, with no strictures on how they live their lives. Too many tragedies, this water-drinking death being just one of them…How sad, and what a waste of a life…

‘Turns out Jennifer Strange, the woman who died, was mother, herself: three kids. She was trying to win them some kind of computer game.
So now there are three motherless children someone else is going to have to care for. As I said, what a waste of a life.
I imagine these kids are going to get more than the video game, even though their mom came second and didn’t actually win one. I imagine there might be some BIG lawsuit, and that maybe her family will be suing the radio station for launching this contest in the first place.
The winner was interviewed on TV and said that both she and Jennifer Strange were a wreck after they’d drunk over four litres of water each. They were both throwing up and felt awful.
Beware radio, Internet, TV, varsity pranks.’Seems life’s cheap today.

There’s a nurse who goes about giving talks on poisons to mystery fans and would-be writers. She makes the point that anything can kill you, “even aspirin. Although the easiest way to kill someone with aspirin is to buy five pounds and hit them over the head with it.”

“Once upon a time anyone with a basic education learned that the dose makes the poison. That is, no matter how harmless a chemical may seem, at high enough levels of consumption it becomes toxic.”
Strange Kate, that’s not your view of CO2 which you’ve told me isn’t a pollutant.

First, Saskboy, it wasn’t Kate’s post.
CO2 certainly does have a toxic level, typically experienced by divers or anyone in an enclosed space with inadequate ventilation. It becomes toxic at about 2%.
Calling it a pollutant makes about as much sense as calling water a pollutant.

Whoops, sorry Kate/Kevin. Case of mistaken identity.
As for your explanation, tell that to Kate, she’s the one who needs to hear it until it sinks in that “more than normal” of anything is too much of it.