Introduction:
A fifteen year old boy abruptly became ill; he experienced fatigue, headaches, tingling limbs, weakness, and weight loss. The only information provided stated that he had been using an acne cream prescribed by a dermatologist as well as an over the counter “beauty cream” to deal with skin irritation. The doctors could not find the reason for the boy’s illness, but interestingly a heavy metal was found in the boy’s urine. What could possibly be the heavy metal and could it have caused such a severe reaction? The objective was to find the cause behind the sudden sickness of this 15 year old boy.
In hopes of finding the cause for his sickness research, diagnostics, and analysis were used to solve the perplexing situation. Hypothesizing that the only scientific explanation for his illness could be that it was a reaction to some heavy metal present in the creams therefore research was conducted to find in which of the compounds that compose the creams is a heavy metal found in. The compounds that are part of the two creams are benzoyl peroxide, acetone, resorcinol, salicylic acid, and calomel. After researching what elements formed part of these compounds, it was found that of those compounds, the first four are organic compounds composed of carbon, oxygen, and hydrogen. Of the first three none contained a heavy metal. However, the last one calomel, which is the common name for mercury (I) chloride (Hg2Cl2), is an ionic bond between mercury and chlorine. Mercury is a heavy metal.
Once the heavy metal was identified, it was needed to ascertain that it was the correct element. To do so, there was a research conducted on cases of mercury contamination and its effects on the human body. The research showed mercury to be...
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The primary goal of this laboratory project was to identify an unknown compound and determine its chemical and physical properties. First the appearance, odor, solubility, and conductivity of the compound were observed and measured so that they could be compared to those of known compounds. Then the cation present in the compound was identified using the flame test. The identity of the anion present in the compound was deduced through a series of chemical tests (Cooper, 2009).
Did you know, the personal care products you use every day have dozens of toxic chemicals that link to cancer, asthma, learning disabilities, and more? A campaign community working to build a healthier planet called The Story of Stuff and the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics, created a seven minute film called Chemicals in Beauty Products: The Story of Cosmetics. The purpose of this campaign film is to inform its viewers, specifically women and moms, about the toxic chemicals in our everyday personal care products, from lipstick to baby shampoo, that we may not know about. It addresses the top harmful chemicals that we are putting into our bodies, the products they are most likely found in, and
The best-selling novel, The Disappearing Spoon, is written by Sam Kean. The book revolves around the periodic table. It goes into such depth of the table, it is literally an adventure historically, politically, and scientifically. Not to mention, it is relevant to what has been learned this school year, which is what I’ll be talking about in this paper. The book is extremely helpful in learning the periodic table of elements, which is an imperative tool to have when studying physical science or chemistry, for example. It fills an unknown void of what the table is, solving mysteries as the chapter progresses.
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Specifically, “Take Two Elements, Call Me in the Morning” explores such situations of the elements copper, vanadium, gadolinium, silver, sulfur, and rhodium. The chapter begins by explaining applications of silver, copper, vanadium, and gadolinium as medicines and antiseptics and describing their benefits and consequences. The following section in the chapter discusses chirality, or handedness. Virtually every protein in every life form has a left-handed twist to it. When this was discovered by Louis Pasteur, it changed modern medicine. Also discovering something that would have a great impact on modern medicine was Gerhard Domagk, whose daughter tripped down a staircase while holding a sewing needle which then punctured her hand and snapped off inside of her. Although the shard was removed, the injury became infected. This spurred Domagk to research ...
There is a debate that there is not actually one person who discovered cadmium. In the year 1817, a physician named Friedrich Stromeyer was one of the first ones who discovered cadmium. There were two more people named K.S.L. Hermann and J.C.H. Roloff that also discovered cadmium the same year. Cadmium is a naturally occurring metal. Cadmium was first discovered in vapors that came out of furnaces. It was found because zinc oxide was being roasted. Some of the early signs of it were in paints. People would want to make light colored paint darker so they would add cadmium, which would cause a brighter color. The pigments were primarily made from cadmium sulfide. Cadmium was also used for making leather gloves darker (Dartmouth, 2010). Cadmium toxicity is when a person eats food that has high levels, breathes in high levels, or drinks water with high levels of cadmium. Short-term or long-term exposer can be harmful...
Eventually, after many doctors appointments, the girls were reported to have extremely weak jaws, and soon the doctors were able to lift the jaw out, not by an operation, but by merely pulling it out with bare hands. This problem eventually led to the death of many young women, and it has been said to have changed the US labor laws forever (Moore, 2017). Radium was originally intended to address health issues and it was thought to distribute fun, healthy, and popular products to consumers. However, radium should have been tested before it was applied to watch faces. Originally, nobody knew what was causing the weakening of bones in the women. However, the mystery of radium poisoning was eventually solved by scientists experiments and studies with radium. The issue of radium poisoning has been found all around the world and is a global issue. The effect that the girls, fighting for their lives, had on equal rights for women also plays a big role in today's society across the
The term forensic toxicology is defined as examination of all aspects of toxicity that may have legal implications (James & Nordby, 2009 p. 61). In the past, poisoning was one of the most popular forms of murder. There are countless natural substances in the world that when ingested into the body in high doses, can become lethal to the human body. What made this form of murder so famous is that most poisons mimic common medical diseases, leading physicians to believe a victim died of natural causes (Ramsland, n.d.). Aside from murder, this forensic discipline is also essential for determining accidental deaths and suicides.
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Lead is considered to be a toxic heavy metal. It occurs naturally in the Earth’s crust. However, it tends to combine with other elements to form lead compounds. (Registry, 2011). Moreover, it has no known function in the body and with excess accumulation, either acute or chronic, will cause a wide array of metabolic dysfunctions by interfering with normal metabolic functions (Analytical Research Laboratories, 2012). From a historical standpoint, most human beings if not all have accumulated some lead in their bodies over the course of their daily lives. In extreme cases, that is, when there is too much lead in the body it is known to cause lead poisoning. In order to fully understand this phenomenon, one must first acknowledge; how lead enters the body, how it is distributed, and how and if it is eliminated.
Toxicology is the investigation of the unfavourable impacts of chemicals on living creatures. Forensic toxicology takes it above and beyond, including various related controls to aid in the location and elucidation of pills and harms poisons and drugs in medico legitimate passing examinations, human execution issues; e.g.,
Plasma was considered as the most important part of human blood, which carries out most of the function in relation to transport. Fluids is the major constituent of plasma, with an estimated total protein concentration of about 7.0-7.5 g/dl, as the solid component in plasma, that contain a complex mixture of different proteins which are mainly glycoprotein and lipoproteins. The concentration of plasma protein is largely occupied by Albumin, which is about 3.4-4.7 g/dl as the major protein; this protein will be discourse in further details, (Murray et al 2003). Plasma protein plays a role as biomarkers in diagnosing human diseases, due to their functions as dynamic interface for molecular transport in the body even though, their determination is very difficult because it contain almost 3700 different proteins as found in the literature, (Manley and Gailer, 2009). It was well known from early research, (Himmelhoch, et al, 1966) that plasma protein contain a minute amount of metals, and different technique were used to determine distribution, which will explained in more details. These metals are essential for many function in relation to good health of a living organism, 15 trace element found in plasma were considered of great importance in this aspect which includes but not limited to: Fe, Zn, Cu, Se, Co, I, K, Na, Mg, Mn, Ca, as reported by (Muniz, et al 2013). However, among these trace element Cu and Zn where considered as the most important of all the trace elements in coordinating health activities and were found to bound one metal per protein. The distribution of these metals was found to be high in Plasma Albumin with a concentration of 36.1-53.6 ...
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Arsenic is a very dangerous toxin because of its discreet properties. This element has no color, taste or odor especially when place...
Although cosmetics became widely popular in the 1900s, tombs from 3100 B.C. have revealed that makeup originated in the first Egyptian Dynasty ("The History of Makeup", 1). Researchers found that these cosmetics contained ingredients that ranged from lead to cat dung; both of which are toxic. The use of toxic chemicals in cosmetics, such as coal tar, negatively impacts a person's health. Cosmetic companies put consumers' health at risk due to the use of toxic chemicals, marketing ploys and failure to properly regulate their own products and the chemicals they contain. While cosmetics pose dangerous risks to the human body in general, pregnant women and their fetus are especially vulnerable to the consequences of being exposed to these toxins.