{Disarmed} Re: Mercury not toxic

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http://www7.nationalgeographic.com/ngm/0505/feature1/index.html

The story was featured in National Geographic's 12 Toxic Tales (May 2005)

....Bad things come in small packages. On August 14, 1996, Wetterhahn, a toxicologist and professor of chemistry at Dartmouth College, spilled a drop, a tiny speck, of dimethylmercury on her left hand. Wetterhahn, tall, thin, intense, was an expert on how toxic metals cause cancer once they penetrate cell membranes. When she spilled the poisonous droplet in her lab, she thought nothing of it; she was wearing latex gloves. What she didn't know killed her. The dimethylmercury was volatile enough to penetrate the glove. Five months later Wetterhahn began stumbling into doors and slurring words. After three weeks in a hospital, she slipped into a coma. "I went to see her, but it wasn't the kind of coma I'd expected," recalled Diane Stearns, one of her postdoctoral students, now a professor of chemistry herself. "She was thrashing about. Her husband saw tears rolling down her face. I asked if she was in pain. The doctors said it didn't appear that her brain could even register pain." Wetterhahn died five months later. She was 48 years old, a wife and mother of two. The mercury had devoured her brain cells "like termites eating away for months," one of her doctors said. How could such a brilliant, meticulous, world-class toxicologist come to such an end? "Only lion tamers are killed by lions," said Kent Sugdan, one of her postdoctoral fellows.

-----Original Message-----From: EOHarm [mailto:EOHarm ]On Behalf Of McDonoughSent: Sunday, August 20, 2006 10:32 AMEOHarm Subject: {Disarmed} Re: Mercury not toxic

It was DImethyl mercuryhttp://www.pp.okstate.edu/ehs/NEWS/KAREN.HTM

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