Seems the initial reporting may have been misleading. There was apparently *no* dimethylmercury exposure, after all: and the university doubts it was ever synthesized.
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.
Other "sources" (using the word loosely as their provenance is unclear)
> "based on the information available, this was a localized issue with only one student directly exposed. Their reported use of dimethyl mercury was unauthorized. MIT does not allow the purchase or synthesis of dimethyl mercury." [1]
Karen Wetterhahn's exposure and death [3] is a cautionary tale of the extreme toxicity of dimethyl mercury, and was instrumental in new safety recommendations, including strongly discouraging the use of dimethyl mercury for any purpose.
Yes, dimethyl mercury is terrifying stuff - it killed Karen Wetterhahn from a few drops that went _through_ the gloves she had on:
> The case proved that the standard precautions at the time, all of which Wetterhahn had carefully followed, were inadequate for "super-toxic" chemicals like dimethylmercury
Back in 1998, I scored a consulting job at a silicon plant outside of Salem, OR. Now I was working as a systems admin and I was expected to be responsible for the computer systems, which were basically located in the normal offices, rather than a dedicated machine room floor.
However, since it was an active silicon manufacturing plant, all employees and contractors were obligated to complete safety training sessions. And I swear now that these safety sessions were designed to weed out the faint-hearted guys who weren't serious about supporting this silicon brand.
The safety sessions were simple lectures, with some handouts and PowerPoints, and some of the chemicals they described were absolutely insidious stuff. They were colorless, odorless, and some could melt or disintegrate bone without noticeably affecting the skin or muscles. They said you would just end up with a limp and useless appendage if you spilled some of this stuff on you. Other stuff was highly toxic and you didn't want to breathe anything. Basically it was a big warning to just stay out of the manufacturing floor, especially if we didn't know what we were doing.
I never went near the manufacturing floor. It was a pretty cool job and I wish I lasted longer there. They couldn't scare me away with a safety session, since my Dad had worked for decades in Environmental Health and Safety. Dad knew all about the nastiest stuff and he was always responding to hazardous laboratory accidents. Dad made us the safest home in our ZIP code.
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.
For lower concentrations (< 50%) HF burns aren't always immediately visible (and often not immediately painful), which can delay treatment as people may assume it's not serious.
Can someone who knows a thing or two about chemistry explain why one would need to synthesize or purchase this chemical. Given that it involves a student I'll take "because of bragging rights to impress everyone" as a valid response, but wondering if it has any value is otherwise? Is it one of those "well despite its danger it's still the best at X, Y and Z and nothing else comes even close"?
I forget the guy's name, but he writes entertaining articles about chemistry things he'll never mess with. I wonder if Dimethyl Mercury is one of them.
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.
Dimethylmercury evaporates to a known degree. Way way more than elemental mercury.
To detect elemental mercury vapor, the air is drawn in to a controlled chamber where if present it amalgamates with pure gold as the reference (zero) material, and determined electronically.
I don't think this works with organic mercury like dimethylmercury. It is an organo-metallic compound and behaves very unlike elemental mercury.
I'd be running the AA's from the analytical labs in mercury-vapor mode, putting them on carts if necessary since they do not need gas supplies for mercury detection & measurement.
Before plasma-emission spectrometers became widespread, more people were familiar with the traditional atomic-absorption (AA) instruments.
Instead of measuring the combined emission of any elements present in the sample, the AA used the steady emission of the target element alone as reference, from a (expensive) lamp having that specific element present within its hollow cathode.
AA normally uses a clean acetylene flame to vaporize the sample, with the reference light beam passing above the flame. If the target element is present in the sample, it absorbs some of the characteristic wavelength from the beam and is detected as a negative deviation from baseline.
For trace mercury though, the flame was not good enough, so an even more expensive and complex graphite furnace was installed in place of the burner.
Either way the light beam passes through a few inches of lab air to get from the lamp to the optical detector.
And you don't need the burner or the furnace to detect things that are already vaporized.
The graphite furnace would be good to calibrate with later if you couldn't do it in advance.
I wonder if their contractor has as good detection ability as MIT itself.
Dimethylmercury was spilled at MIT on August 26. It seems one person was exposed and taken to MGH Wednesday night. Dimethylmercury is incredibly toxic (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn). I don't know of any confirmed cases of someone exposed surviving, but I hope they are able to treat this person. There doesn't seem to have been any emergency declared or alert by MIT at the time. Students were informed of potential contamination the following morning, but more recent information suggests the spill was fairly localized. Dimethylmercury is not allowed on MIT's campus so it is unclear why this person had it. The building is closed for decontamination.
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):
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.
Thanks! 40+ years ago I worked in a marine biology lab as a dishpig for seawater analysis and we had fun times when the annual clear out found a gallon jug of benzene at the point of panic about benzene being replaced by toluene.
If the lab is going to check for trace benzene in the water, ideally you would have some pure material for reference purposes.
Put that in perspective against industrial quantities where a hardhat operator opens the hatch on a very full compartment of a chemical tanker, looking at their mirror image reflecting up from the surface of a few hundred tonnes of cargo a few feet below.
Which is then carefully sampled and delivered to a lab where they check for trace water in the benzene.
"Emerging information calls into question whether this compound was in fact synthesized. We are also able to disclose, with the student’s permission, that while the student remains under medical supervision, their initial blood test result, which was received today, shows no sign of exposure to mercury."
Wow, I wonder if chelation therapy early enough can reduce the damage to the student's nervous system. I'm not aware of how quickly organic mercury crosses the BBB once it enters the bloodstream, but my guess is "faster than you'd like".
I hope it was worth working with such a notoriously unsafe compound against regulations and all sense.
Yeah that was awful, but in her case she was unaware of the poisoning for months iirc. Then again I don't really buy that chelation therapy works that well for something as absurdly toxic as this even if you found a safe and workable ligand.
I guess the student just needs to hope their exposure was incredibly minute, otherwise they really have only a hard death to look forward to.
There are some new results for treatment with selenium and acetyl cysteine. MGH is probably the best place to get treatment for this. We’ll have to wait and see, and there is not any information out about the extent of exposure. Prior cases all seem to have only sought treatment upon getting symptoms, so I am cautiously optimistic about this case
https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/alleged-dimethylme... ("The Alleged Dimethylmercury Incident")
Seems the initial reporting may have been misleading. There was apparently *no* dimethylmercury exposure, after all: and the university doubts it was ever 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/
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/mit/comments/1w12gb9/dimethyl_mercu...
[2] https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/hazmat-crews-respond-to...
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
Holy hell. I would've have believed it was possible for a non-biological substance to be so toxic.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyanide_poisoning
> A fatal dose for humans is on average 1.52 mg/kg of body weight
Assuming 80kg(175pounds), that's like 120mg of Cyanide.
There is probably even more nasty stuff.
> The case proved that the standard precautions at the time, all of which Wetterhahn had carefully followed, were inadequate for "super-toxic" chemicals like dimethylmercury
(from the Wikipedia page [3])
However, since it was an active silicon manufacturing plant, all employees and contractors were obligated to complete safety training sessions. And I swear now that these safety sessions were designed to weed out the faint-hearted guys who weren't serious about supporting this silicon brand.
The safety sessions were simple lectures, with some handouts and PowerPoints, and some of the chemicals they described were absolutely insidious stuff. They were colorless, odorless, and some could melt or disintegrate bone without noticeably affecting the skin or muscles. They said you would just end up with a limp and useless appendage if you spilled some of this stuff on you. Other stuff was highly toxic and you didn't want to breathe anything. Basically it was a big warning to just stay out of the manufacturing floor, especially if we didn't know what we were doing.
I never went near the manufacturing floor. It was a pretty cool job and I wish I lasted longer there. They couldn't scare me away with a safety session, since my Dad had worked for decades in Environmental Health and Safety. Dad knew all about the nastiest stuff and he was always responding to hazardous laboratory accidents. Dad made us the safest home in our ZIP code.
As an aside, I love it when they tell you in the safety WBT what the highly toxic gas smells like.
Some guy's in the hospital from handling droplets of instant liquid death and they're worried about feelings being hurt?
https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/a-risk-not-worth-taki...
(Well, the poor woman, then, this article ...)
To detect elemental mercury vapor, the air is drawn in to a controlled chamber where if present it amalgamates with pure gold as the reference (zero) material, and determined electronically.
I don't think this works with organic mercury like dimethylmercury. It is an organo-metallic compound and behaves very unlike elemental mercury.
I'd be running the AA's from the analytical labs in mercury-vapor mode, putting them on carts if necessary since they do not need gas supplies for mercury detection & measurement.
Before plasma-emission spectrometers became widespread, more people were familiar with the traditional atomic-absorption (AA) instruments.
Instead of measuring the combined emission of any elements present in the sample, the AA used the steady emission of the target element alone as reference, from a (expensive) lamp having that specific element present within its hollow cathode.
AA normally uses a clean acetylene flame to vaporize the sample, with the reference light beam passing above the flame. If the target element is present in the sample, it absorbs some of the characteristic wavelength from the beam and is detected as a negative deviation from baseline.
For trace mercury though, the flame was not good enough, so an even more expensive and complex graphite furnace was installed in place of the burner.
Either way the light beam passes through a few inches of lab air to get from the lamp to the optical detector.
And you don't need the burner or the furnace to detect things that are already vaporized.
The graphite furnace would be good to calibrate with later if you couldn't do it in advance.
I wonder if their contractor has as good detection ability as MIT itself.
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?
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.
Put that in perspective against industrial quantities where a hardhat operator opens the hatch on a very full compartment of a chemical tanker, looking at their mirror image reflecting up from the surface of a few hundred tonnes of cargo a few feet below.
Which is then carefully sampled and delivered to a lab where they check for trace water in the benzene.
"Emerging information calls into question whether this compound was in fact synthesized. We are also able to disclose, with the student’s permission, that while the student remains under medical supervision, their initial blood test result, which was received today, shows no sign of exposure to mercury."
I hope it was worth working with such a notoriously unsafe compound against regulations and all sense.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn#Accident_and_...
I guess the student just needs to hope their exposure was incredibly minute, otherwise they really have only a hard death to look forward to.