Chemistry series Part II (Mercury - A Torture Killer)

 We all know the trends on cine industry, if a feel good movies or any particular genre done well on market then more feel good movies or particular genre movies will come until the trend goes off. Recent trending film genre is violent movies, villains will kill innocent people violently in different ways that's the old way of making this genre movies but now even way of film making changed - Hero started killing people's on villain gang, then the main villain violently and some times innocent people (don't know why).

 Mercury is such a torture killer, it will not kill people instantly but people who exposing themselves to mercury poisoning on regular basis will die eventually but the suffering will be brutal. We are going to see such real life incident's. The most famous one is Dr Karen Wetterhahn's death

Many peoples died due to mercury poisoning but professor Karen wetterhahn's death stuns research field because she was a chemist - her profession was investigating toxic metals and published more than 85 research papers. On August 1996 while using Dimethyl mercury for a research, the chemical accidently spiller in her glove hand. She immediately followed safety protocol, washing her hands and cleaning her tools but damage was already done and the worst part was she does not aware of it.

In November 1996, symptoms started to show off. she began vomiting and feeling nauseous, over couple of months it worsened her speech was slurred, trouble seeing & hearing and she regularly falling down. Even doctors couldn't find the reason for her illness and but noticed her symptoms were in conjunction with mercury poisoning. Karen told them about dimethyl mercury incident and later on she diagnosed on late January 1997 . She began chelation therapy, ingesting medication that would bind to the toxic chemical and help it pass through the body.

While Karen was fighting for her life, her colleagues ( scientist all around the word as well) read scientific papers about mercury hoping to discover a way to help her. Sadly the level of mercury in wetterhahn's body was too high - 800 times of normal level.

She went in to coma on February and eventually died on June 8, 1997.

Although a few people died including a English lab workers in 1865 and a Czech chemist in 1972 but no one was aware how dangerous these chemicals are. Scientist later learn that latex glove offers no protection to toxic organic chemicals.

The Minamata Tragedy & The Iraq Grain Incident were the famous incidents were thousands of innocent people died due to mercury poisoning ...

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