Cargo cult science in the Gulf, news at 11

Credit: WKRG/Mediaite

The Gulf oil tragedy has already shown the ignorance of some reporters about chemistry. However, a Mobile TV station and their chemist has taken it to new heights when they blamed the oil spill for (likely) bad glassware.

WKRG is a local TV news station in Mobile, Alabama; they sent intrepid reporter Jessica Taloney to collect samples of local beach water. (See video of story below.) They asked a local lab to analyze the samples for oil and grease; the lab owner and analytical chemist, Bob Naman, suggested that the level of oil and grease should be pretty close to 5 ppm.

Of course, all the samples showed the presence of oil and grease, with amounts up to 200 ppm. While these results are not particularly surprising, the result of one sample was not obtainable because the chemist claimed that the sample exploded during the extraction. Rather than blame the broken separatory funnel on a star crack or a lack of venting, the chemist said that “We think that it most likely happened due to the presence of methanol, or methane gas, or the presence of the dispersant Corexit.”

No. This is just wrong. Having actually shaken separatory funnels full of mixtures of water and flammable solvents (including methanol!) on a daily or weekly basis for about 10 years now, I have yet to see any of them explode. Surfactants like Corexit are not known for being particularly explosive, especially at room temperature.

I think it is far more likely to be coincidental; in addition, wouldn’t a true explosion have left much less of the funnel? Heaven help us. (When the reporter obtained another sample from the same area 4 days later, the oil and grease concentrations were at the 1 ppm level. Not explosive enough? (That’s a joke, non-chemists.))

T

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How’s your laundry’s chemical hygiene?

Credit: University of Ottawa EH&S

A recent report from the President’s Cancer Panel on the environmental causes of cancer* had a rather interesting recommendation relevant to chemists. As to what you could do to lower your risk and your family’s, here’s what it said (page 111):

“Family exposure to numerous occupational chemicals can be reduced by removing shoes before entering the home and washing work clothes separately from the other family laundry.”

So what do you think of that? As chemists, we are presumably more exposed than the typical person, although I suspect that there are industrial workers (coal miners?) who are even more exposed than us.

I know that I have typically avoided bringing my shoes into the home (but, then again, I’ve always taken off my shoes before I enter my home). Recently, I have begun washing my work clothes separately from my family’s. Due to my work circumstances, I’m guessing that I carry home more compound that the average chemist. Then again, it’s the same washing machine. Short of running an ethanol rinse between washes (can you imagine the cost?), I don’t know if there’s a good answer for that one.

I’m terribly interested to know what other people’s habits are about their clothing and chemical hygiene? Do you let your kids hug you when you walk in the door from work? Do you let your dog chew on your work shoes? Inquiring minds want to know…

*Folks (e.g. Derek Lowe) have been pretty critical of the report. I’ve noticed that it’s pretty long on assertion myself. Nonetheless, it’s an interesting topic.

Photo from the University of Ottawa’s lab EH&S site.

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Is Chemistry Incompatible with Web 2.0?

(This post is in response to the April 19 editorial in C&E News.  For the response to the May 10 editorial, click here)

A recent ChemJobber post notes that C&E News Editor-in-Chief Rudy Baum‘s editorials sometimes have a tendency to approach the controversial – and sometimes the purely political.  I wanted to discuss this weeks editorial which threatens to call into question much of my online existence (sorry, Mitch.  If Rudy’s right, I think you’re about to spontaneously e-implode).

In this week’s editorial, “The Limits of Web 2.0,” Baum decries the cliché “information wants to be free” for both its out-of-context usage (the full quote says information wants to be expensive because it is valuable and free because the cost of information dissemination is shrinking almost hourly – thus a struggle) and for its lunacy (information can’t wish for anything – it’s inanimate).  Rather, Baum says that it’s people who wish that information would be free.  I’d amend Baum’s correction slightly.  People really want information to be free and readily accessible.  I’d argue public libraries have long made most information “free,” if you were willing to do the legwork to get it.

But the bulk of Baum’s editorial promotes Jaron Lanier’s book You are Not a Gadget: A Manefesto, and summarizes Lanier’s main points, namely that the wisdom of crowds can be dangerous and science should be loath to adopt web 2.0 ideals.  Lanier points out that around the turn of century, a “torrent (a word hijacked by the web 2.0 crowd -ed.) of petty designs sometimes called web 2.0″ flooded the web.  And through the use of web 2.0, we apparently are losing sight of the trees for the forest, er, the taggers for the cloud.

Baum writes in his editorial (cross-posted for free on the web 2.0 CENtral Science blog, natch), “The essence of what Lanier is saying is that individuals are important and that we’re losing sight of that at our own peril in elevating the wisdom of the crowd to a higher plane than the creativity of a single person.”  That is, we are valuing the cloud more than the individuals, when the cloud can’t exist – and has no meaning - without the existence of the individuals.  Lanier notes that collective intelligence can be used well, but only when guided by individuals who can direct the course of the hive mind and help steer clear of common groupthink pitfalls.

But the most interesting quote comes near then end, when Baum quotes Lanier as saying that scientific communities “achieve quality through a cooperative process that includes checks and balances, and ultimately rests on a foundation of goodwill and ‘blind’ elitism.”  I’m not really sure what that means…

But to Lanier’s thesis that science ought to be wary of embracing web 2.0 and its ideals, I find it interesting that Baum writes his editorial at C&E News, the magazine of the ACS, whose flagship publication, the Journal of the American Chemical Society, has featured a JACSβ page for some time now.  The same C&E News whose blog has become so popular that it had to split off into several child blogs.  Where each post for each ACS article has links to share the article on one of several social networking sites.  Where scientists can now browse their favorite article on their iphones with ACSMobile.  While perhaps late to the party in some areas, the American Chemical Society has certainly ‘logged on’ to web 2.0 as a way to export content to the web-savvy scientist.

Plus, we have our own Mitch, a one man walking encapsulation of web 2.0.  His most successful application is, in my opinion, the chemical forums, which typically sees between 8,000 and 11,000 visitors per day.  This blog seems to be a big hit, and his ChemFeeds is a one-stop source for your aggregated list of your favorite journals’ graphical abstracts.  All this innovation on Mitch’s part earned him an interview with David Bradley (of ScienceBase) in his chemistry WebMagazine, Reactive Reports.

There’s also the Chemistry Reddit as another outlet of chemistry news and notes.

In the inaugural issue of Nature Chemistry, the Nature Publishing Group recounted how they have completely bought into web 2.0 as a means of science communication – each issue of Nature Chemistry even features a roundup of their favorite posts from the chemical blogosphere (which reminds me, to the left, Mitch has also created an aggregated rss feed of several popular chemistry blogs).

And, of course, web 2.0 in the sciences has been discussed in the blogs several times over the years.  We have over 3 pages of posts categorized Web 2.0, mostly Mitch’s posts on new web 2.0 platforms he’s developed.  Jean-Claude Bradley writes about web 2.0 in response to a very interesting post at Nascent, a blog from the folks at Nature.

So, all of these prove that web 2.0 has been talked about many times in the context of science.  Has it worked?  With the exception of blogs, sadly I’m inclined to say no.  At least not yet.  And even with blogs (with the possible exception of All Things Metathesis, and In the Pipeline, though Derek isn’t allowed to talk about his work b/c of intellectual property issues), not a lot of academic or industry leaders are prone to blogging.  It’s not like we’re reading Phil Baran’s blog and getting inside his head on a daily basis.

Sure, there is a subculture of people who are active on the web 2.0 scene, but it surely hasn’t taken off as a medium for all chemists to enjoy.  It theoretically should.  Chemists are always benefited from communal sharing of results and information.  But there are still (and probably always will be) people who seem reluctant to join the new technological paradigm.  I like the way Timo Hannay words it in his post on Nascent,

“But it’s not up to the doubters to ‘get it’, it is up to those of us who support these developments to demonstrate their value. And if we can’t then they don’t deserve to be adopted and we don’t deserve to be heard.”

Especially if there are people at the position of Editor-in-Chief for arguably the top chemistry magazine denouncing the web 2.0 movement, clearly it has a ways to go before it will be appreciated by all to the point where web 2.0 is ‘taken for granted,’ where we don’t even realize what we’re doing when we post results and opinions via web 2.0 technologies.

Let’s get moving!

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Indiana University Biochemistry Major Commits Suicide with Hydrogen Sulfide

Almost exactly one month ago, I posted on a recent duo of suicides in my area by hydrogen sulfide (MSDS) – a toxic gas generated by mixing together certain easy-to-obtain household chemicals.

Today, I saw a story out of my home state of Indiana that a 21 year old junior biochemistry major from Indiana Univeristy has taken his life using this same hydrogen sulfide method.  Gregory Willoughby apparently worked as an undergraduate research assistant in the Cognitive Neuroimaging Laboratory in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

In this instance, Gregory Willoughby barricaded himself in the closet of his dorm room on or about April 4.  He left notes on the closet door warning first responders that hydrogen sulfide gas was present.  Several days later, his suitemate began notifying physical plant of a strange odor in the area, and it took several visits by various facilities management groups over several days before they decided to enter Willoughby’s room.  Police had to break down the door as it was barricaded from the inside by tape and furniture.  By this time, the gas had thoroughly dissipated and no first responders complained of injuries as a result of residual hydrogen sulfide.

I’ve talked about the dangers of hydrogen sulfide before.  Perhaps its most dangerous symptom is olfactory fatigue.  Low concentrations of hydrogen sulfide smell like rotten eggs.  Prolonged exposure leads to olfactory fatigue – you lose the ability to detect the odor of hydrogen sulfide.  You no longer smell rotten eggs, so you think the threat has passed.  Instead, you are still inhaling potentially lethal levels of the toxic gas.  High concentrations of hydrogen sulfide can lead to instantaneous unconsciousness and near immediate death.

Hydrogen sulfide suicide is also potentially dangerous to first responders and innocent bystanders.  In several instances in several countries, first responders have been hospitalized for hydrogen sulfide inhalation after trying to rescue victims who do not leave notes warning the first responders of the danger.  Additionally, one story notes a Japanese teen who used hydrogen sulfide in an apartment building and sickened almost 100 other residents as the gas spread throughout the complex.  It is very fortunate that did not happen here, given the close living quarters of the typical college dorm.

I talked last time about the thin line between responsible and irresponsible use of chemicals found both around the house and especially in the chemistry lab.  We don’t – and probably won’t – know if this student made use of his chemistry knowledge in making his final decisions.  All we can do at this point is remind readers – chemists and non-chemists alike – to take seriously the responsibility inherent in handling chemicals.  It’s all too easy for bad things to happen (unintentional as well as intentional) when playing with chemicals.

Again, I want to take this opportunity to encourage anyone struggling with thoughts of suicide – especially anyone who came to this page today for that reason – to call 911, your local emergency response number, or any of the numerous national and local suicide hotlines available.  Do it now.  I will also post the same disclaimer as last time: the comments of this post will be closely monitored.  Anyone attempting to post recipes for the generation of hydrogen sulfide gas will have their comments removed immediately.

Previous at Chemistry-Blog:

• Hydrogen Sulfide Suicide
• Suicides in Chemistry

Helpful information for first responders and health care providers:

• Very detailed CDC bulletin on hydrogen sulfide with sections for on-site medical care as well as information for long-term care
• St. Louis University bulletin on the dangers of and treatment for hydrogen sulfide inhalation
• Shelby County (KY) EMS presentation on hydrogen sulfide

Stories about the IU suicide:

• Initial Indiana Daily Student (IU newspaper) story on the death
• IDS follow up on victim
• WTHR (NBC Indianapolis) story with news video.
• WTHR follow up on victim
• Bloomington, IN, Herald Times on autopsy report
• Indianapolis Star story

Update (4/15):

New news stories:

• Indiana Daily Student article about the life of Willoughby.  Undergraduate research with apparent plans to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry, Wells Scholar, accomplished cellist (in a quartet called “Stringin’ Scientist”, approved for study abroad for summer 2010
• WRTV (ABC Indianapolis) story on the risk to first responders
• WISH (CBS Indianapolis) TV news segment on the incident
• Terra Sigillata (of ScienceBlogs) coverage

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Hydrogen Sulfide Suicide

I woke up this morning to Breaking News on my local morning news.  Police responded to a suspicious vehicle call around 10pm, where they found a woman slumped over in her car.  Police opened the door, whereupon they discovered a bucket with chemicals on the front seat.  The officer was overcome with the fumes and treated at the hospital for burning in his throat.  His condition is as yet unknown (update: he was released).

The regional hazmat team evacuated the surrounding neighborhood while they attempted to remove the woman from the car.  The woman did not survive.

The police are not releasing details of the chemical used, but it appears to be related to a similar suicide on the other side of town in February.  In that case, the victim left notes all over the car saying, “Do not open!!! poison gas!!! hydrogen sulfide.”  Another note, in part, read “hazmat team needed.”  When hazmat crews opened the car in that case, they measured levels of hydrogen sulfide more than 3 times the lethal limit.

Hydrogen sulfide (HS) (MSDS) is a colorless, highly flammable gas.  Humans can detect hydrogen sulfide at low concentrations, where it smells like rotten eggs.  Higher levels (~40 ppm) can irritate mucous membranes and cause headache, fatigue, dizziness, and even memory loss and bronchitis on repeated exposure.  At concentrations 50-400 ppm, can produce cough, dyspnea, hemoptysis, cyanosis, agitation, vertigo, confusion, nausea and vomiting, tremulousness, cardiac arrhythmias, hypertension, and, possibly, loss of consciousness.  According to one source, “just 2-3 breaths of HS at >700 ppm can cause immediate death.”  Most notably, prolonged exposure quickly leads to “olfactory fatigue” whereupon you can no longer smell hydrogen sulfide and can no longer detect its presence.

The mode of action is as follows: “The major route of toxicity for HS is by inhalation. At lower doses, local irritant effects predominate. At higher exposures, cellular respiration may cease as HS forms a complex bond to the iron ion in mitochondrial cytochrome oxidase, arresting aerobic metabolism in an effect similar to cyanide toxicity and affecting all organs, particularly the nervous system.”

It’s no secret that chemicals can be used for nefarious purposes.  Perhaps the most familiar is death by cyanide poisoning, with perhaps the most infamous case being the suicide of graduate student Jason Altom at Harvard in 1998.  Atropine, adrenaline, carbon monoxide, chloroform, and even the bizarre UK case of assassination by polonium.  The educated chemist has only a thin line to cross when reaching across the chemical shelf.  A good dose of respect with a large side of humility is in order as we remember the power of the knowledge we have attained.

Suicide by hydrogen sulfide was new to me.  But a wave of this type of chemical suicide swept Japan beginning in 2008.  A USA Today article written in July 2008 noted over 500 deaths so far that year from hydrogen sulfide.  One teen, who released the gas in her apartment, sickened more than 80 people throughout the complex as the gas spread from unit to unit.  Isolated cases have appeared throughout the United States in the past few years, including these two around me in the last 3 weeks.

Fortunately, emergency management teams have produced a number of documents to aid emergency responders.  The CDC, St. Louis University, and Shelby County (KY) EMS have good information for first responders.

Previous Chemistry Blog post on suicides in chemistry.

On behalf of the Chemistry Blog community, anyone struggling with thoughts of suicide – especially anyone who came to this page today for that reason – is urged to call 911, your local emergency response number, or any of the numerous national and local suicide hotlines available.  The comments of this post will be closely monitored.  Anyone attempting to post recipes for the generation of hydrogen sulfide gas will have their comments removed immediately.

Update: Chemjobber sends along an article from The Atlantic magazine talking in sometimes raw emotion about the suicide mentality that seems to be problematic in parts of Japan.

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Biology professor allegedly involved in shooting

Suspect in UAH shooting - credit Huntsville Times, Dave Dieter

News broke this afternoon that there was a shooting at the University of Alabama in Huntsville’s Shelby Hall. It took me a while to find that this is (among other things) the home of UAH’s chemistry department. While CNN hasn’t filled in the details, the Huntsville Times already has reported that biology Professor Amy Bishop was taken into custody and her husband has been detained for the deaths of 3 faculty members and the wounding of 3 others.

While stunning and tragic, this would not have rated a post except for the alleged reason for the shooting: denial of tenure. According to the New York Times:

WAFF, the NBC affiliate in Huntsville, quoted university officials as saying the professor began shooting after learning at the faculty meeting that she was being denied tenure…

Dr. Bishop had told acquaintances recently that she was worried about getting tenure, said a business associate who met her at a business technology open house at the end of January and asked not to be named because of the close-knit nature of the science community in Huntsville. “She began to talk about her problems getting tenure in a very forceful and animated way, saying it was unfair,” the associate said, referring to a conversation in which she blamed specific colleagues for her problems.

Wow. Denial of tenure must be crushing for an assistant professor, especially since the process must seem protracted, random and unfair (at times). The really surprising detail is that (allegedly) she brought a gun; that’s an indication of a willingness to use violence and a certain level of forethought as to the potential outcome of the meeting. (CORRECTED: see update below.) Academic science is high pressure indeed.

My (our) thoughts are with the families of the victims.

UPDATE: From the AP:

University spokesman Ray Garner said Saturday that the professor, Amy Bishop, had been informed months ago that she would not be granted tenure. He said the faculty meeting where she is accused of gunning down colleagues was not called to discuss tenure.

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How Water Freezes Lower on a Negatively Charged Surface

I first heard this on National Public Radio and then I searched for it. In short, David Ehre, Etay Lavert, Meir Lahav, and Igor Lubomirsky report in Science, (Water Freezes Differently on Positively and Negatively Charged Surfaces of Pyroelectric Materials) water freezes at a lower temperature (-18°C) on the negatively charged side of a lithium tantalate plate with a strontium titanate film than on the positive side (-7°C, and -12°C uncharged).

Is this unique or is this a manifestation of something in our standard introductory organic chemistry textbooks? I thought it was the latter. Let me explain how.

For the purpose of thinking about this problem, let us assume the metal surface is simply a flat charged surface, without contour. If the surface has a negative charge, then the water should be attracted like a flagpole. One hydrogen should be anchored to the surface of the metal at right angles and the other hydrogen could spin about that axis with the flag hydrogen at 105°. It should not be surprising that this configuration should not be as good of a surface as one with greater rigidity.

If we compare with the positively charged surface, then both pairs of non-bonded electrons should be anchored to the surface and locking the hydrogens in a fixed position. This should limit the degrees of freedom and enable crystal growth.

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Good News: Lancet Article Author Cooks Data on Vaccine/Autism Link Updated and Bumped: Lancet Retracts Wakefield’s 1998 Paper

(See important update, below)

The Times of London yesterday ran a story that Jenny McCarthy needs to read (h/t HotAir.com).  The article details an investigation of the results of the 1998 paper in the Lancet medical journal which shows a link between thimerosal in MMR vaccines and autism.  The investigation concludes the author, Andrew Wakefield, manipulated data to show the link.

Confidential medical documents and interviews with witnesses have established that Andrew Wakefield manipulated patients’ data, which triggered fears that the MMR triple vaccine to protect against measles, mumps and rubella was linked to the condition.

The research … claimed that the families of eight out of 12 children attending a routine clinic at the hospital had blamed MMR for their autism, and said that problems came on within days of the jab. The team also claimed to have discovered a new inflammatory bowel disease underlying the children’s conditions.

However, our investigation … reveals that: In most of the 12 cases, the children’s ailments as described in The Lancet were different from their hospital and GP records. Although the research paper claimed that problems came on within days of the jab, in only one case did medical records suggest this was true, and in many of the cases medical concerns had been raised before the children were vaccinated. Hospital pathologists, looking for inflammatory bowel disease, reported in the majority of cases that the gut was normal. This was then reviewed and the Lancet paper showed them as abnormal.

How convincing was Dr. Wakefield’s article?  Vaccination rates in the UK dropped from 98% to below 80%.  Some 1350 cases of measles have been confirmed in the UK, a 2400% increase over the number of confirmed cases in 1998.

Besides the obvious implications of manipulated data, no one seemed too concerned that Dr. Wakefield’s sample in the 1998 paper included only 12 children.  Time after time after time, studies have tried to replicate Dr. Wakefield’s results.  Not surprisingly (anymore), no one was able to.  Yet, that doesn’t stop parents from receiving news time warning about vaccines, the CDC from needing to issue a statement on the safety of thimerosal, the HHS from issuing money from the vaccine injury fund (!), and major presidential candidates from telling town hall attendees that there is a “strong link” between thimerosal and autism.

I don’t even think this qualifies for an Ig Nobel award.  It’s just infuriating.

Update (2/2/10): Today, the Lancet Medical Journal officially retracted Dr. Wakefield’s original 1998 paper.  The retraction was the final domino to fall in officially discrediting the specious claim linking thimerosal and autism.  How long will it take to rid the vaccine-autism link from the minds of worried parents?  That’s a different question.  Hopefully, though, doctors can now use this to help persuade overly-worried parents that vaccines are indeed safe.

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Ditch the Dimetapp?

I just finished up the teaching part of my teaching fellowship.  I got to teach five weeks of an undergrad organic class, and I had a blast!  As the seasons started to change, though, I started to hear more and more coughing and sneezing and sniffling.  Everyone’s all concerned with the swine flu, but we’re also entering cough and cold season, too.

The news I’m presenting today from ScienceDaily is old news, but I hadn’t heard it before… That makes it news to me   In an article published in 2004 in the journal Pediatrics (DOI: 10.1542/peds.114.1.e85), Dr. Ian Paul of Penn State Children’s Hospital studied the effect of dextromethorphan and diphenhydramine versus placebo in providing nighttime relief from cough symptoms as a result of upper respiratory infection.

Dextromethorphan is sold as an antitussive (cough medicine) in just about every cough formulation known to man.  The study specifically tested cough syrups in children ages 2-18.  Parents were given a survey to used to rate severity of symptoms.  The following morning, parents filled out a second survey re-rating the same symptoms.  The follow up survey also asked how both the children and parents slept during the night.

The double blind study showed that while symptoms did improve with the active ingredients, there was no statistical improvement over placebo.  On the scoring scale used in the study, children taking dextromethorphan improved 10.06 points, while those taking diphenhydramine improved an average of 11.79 points.  By comparison, children in the placebo group improved 10.85 points.

Given that dextromethorphan can easily be abused when taken in high doses, one wonders whether a spoonful of sugar (in the form of honey) might be as good of a cough syrup as any.  Keep this in mind when you browse the shelf at the drug store this winter.

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