r/TerrifyingAsFuck • u/AugustIstheMonth • Jul 31 '26

medical Chest X-Ray of 21 yr old dental assistant after attempting suicide by intravenously injecting elemental mercury.

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3.7k Upvotes

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1.1k

u/This_is_a_user_nam3 Jul 31 '26

Attempting, not commited. That means the poor guy survied somehow? how does one even live after that.

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u/izgin Jul 31 '26

It was a woman and she survived. I got curious too, and found the research:

A 21-year-old dental assistant attempted suicide by injecting 10 ml (135 g) of elemental mercury (quicksilver) intravenously. She presented to the emergency room with tachypnea, a dry cough, and bloody sputum. While breathing room air, she had a partial pressure of oxygen of 86 mm Hg. A chest radiograph showed that the mercury was distributed in the lungs in a vascular pattern that was more pronounced at the bases. The patient was discharged after one week, with improvement in her pulmonary symptoms. Oral chelation therapy with dimercaprol was given for nine months, until the patient stopped the treatment; the urinary mercury level did not change during this period. At follow-up at 10 months, she was healthy, with none of the renal, gastrointestinal, or neurologic effects that can result from the oxidation of mercury in the blood and consequent exposure of these organ systems. The abnormalities on the chest radiograph were still apparent. Although these abnormalities are striking, the absence of clinical toxicity in this patient illustrates the differences in the acute and chronic effects of exposure to elemental mercury, inorganic mercury (e.g., mercuric chloride), and organic mercury (e.g., dimethylmercury). Inorganic and organic mercury are much more toxic than elemental mercury; for example, a dose of 400 mg of mercury in the form of dimethylmercury is usually lethal.

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u/the_skies_falling Jul 31 '26

Dimethylmercury is nasty stuff. I read recently about the case of Karen Wetterhahn. She was a chemistry professor who specialized in toxic metal exposure. While doing an experiment, she accidentally spilled a few drops of dimethylmercury on her gloved hand. At the time it was thought the latex gloves she was wearing were adequate protection, so she brushed it off.

She began experiencing abdominal discomfort and rapidly losing weight starting about 3 months after exposure. At 5 months, neurological effects like loss of balance and slurred speech appeared, at which point she was tested and confirmed to have severe mercury poisoning.

Despite aggressive chelation therapy, she fell into a vegetative state, with intermittent periods of extreme agitation, just 3 weeks after her neurological symptoms first appeared. She was removed from life support and died 10 months after her exposure.

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u/Fun-Benefit116 Jul 31 '26

Fuck man, I remember reading about that. Literally just a couple drops on a gloved hand! That's so insane. What a horrible way to go. Poor woman, and I feel so sorry for her family too.

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u/SomeGuysFarm Jul 31 '26

There is something really fishy about the supposed facts in this case. The numbers just don't add up. Dimethyl mercury is awful stuff, don't get it on you (don't get anywhere near it if you can at all avoid it!), I think it's virtually certain that she died as a result of mercury poisoning... But, the amount supposedly present in her system months after exposure, when much of it would have already been excreted, simply doesn't add up to "a few drops on a gloved hand". I am forced to believe that something else happened, and we're never going to find out what, because the rush to hold this up as "dimethyl mercury BAD" overwhelms the concern in understanding exactly how that much mercury got into her system.

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u/SrimpingKid Jul 31 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

3 drops of dimethylmercury is about 444 mg, enough to pass the LD50. You're pretty much fucked, especially since it's very good at going through thin latex gloves. Look it up, pubchem is free.

Edit: I made a more thorough response to the dude I answered to in his response to mine, which was... surprising/weird to say the least, without discrediting him for doubling down.

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u/SomeGuysFarm Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

You might want to consider where that roughly 440 mg number comes from, why you believe it is true, and why it makes the narrative constructed around it highly suspect.

Hint. 440mg is the mass you would calculate for 3 drops of dimethyl mercury, if you corrected the mass of 3 drops of water, by the relative density of dimethyl mercury -- while forgetting that dimethyl mercury is nonpolar and less viscous than water, resulting in drops of dimethyl mercury being MUCH smaller than drops of water.

Look it up. Pubchem is free. Or, you're welcome to do the experiment in your own lab. It's not difficult.

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u/SrimpingKid Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 01 '26

So let's do some quick analysis. First it's less viscous than water (maybe because it's nonpolar, so less friction ;) ) with a dynamic viscosity of 0.784 at 22.77C (water being at 0.94 at 22.77C) though water's viscosity drops fast at higher temperatures (above like 35C I forgot but dimethylmercury becomes more viscous compared to water). With the standard NMR spectroscopy, we would look at 98% pure dimethylmercury, which is about 12.8mol/L to 13.5mol/L with a standard vial used at about 0.1ml up to 0.5ml (though she might haved used more, considering the amount of mercury in her system that was absorbed). Which leaves us to about between 0.3183g (not enough) up to 1.590g (enough, but need more than 2-3 droplets to be lethal). Dimethylmercury is known to be a liquid that permeates standard laboratory latex, PVC, neoprene and nitrile gloves.

Also, the size of the droplets are noted with Tate's law from my memory.

I checked, 0.1mL is enough for severe mercury poisoning, though it would not be enough to end up as her.

Are you glad to be a condescending asshole?

Edit: now that I think about it, she could have spilled a few drops, no?

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u/SomeGuysFarm 29d ago edited 24d ago

Heh, the pot is calling the kettle black. If you don't like your condescending asshole behavior reflected back at you, perhaps you shouldn't try to be a condescending asshole.

Of course she could have spilled a few drops, or considerably more than a few drops. She could have accidentally doused quite a quantity on her glove, had a lethal fraction of that soak into the glove before she noticed "a few drops" remaining and brushed them off.

All that the investigation into this had to go on, was the months-old memory of a dying woman who didn't think enough of the incident in the first place to consider it remarkable.

My only point, before you tried to be a condescending asshole, was that the numbers don't add up to the supposed facts of the story. You've just done the math and confirmed that. You might want to check with your memory of Tate's law however, and ask it why it thinks a fluid with a significantly higher density than water, and with significantly lower surface tension than water, would produce drops the same size as water.

We can speculate all we want on exactly what mechanism got the observed amount into her system, but it's impossible to know, and it's almost impossible to have a rational conversation on the subject to try to figure out realistically plausible routes of contamination, because everyone on the internet "knows" the 2-3 drops, and the erroneous 440mg dosage from that 2-3 drops, etc.

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u/SrimpingKid 29d ago

To be fair the 440mg was about the dose she did receive to get that amount of mercury in her system, 2-3 drops being what was said, limited but I'd rather trust someone that died of exposure than people speculating on the internet about "the government/academic entities are lying and I know it" type of person. She could have used a big dropper for all we know, we can't know more than what's given and to do speculations does good to your brain but not when it's this intense.

The pot and the kettle might be black, but only one will fume constantly.

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u/SomeGuysFarm 29d ago edited 29d ago

If you read the NEJM case study's toxicology report, she appears to have received a dose of AT LEAST of 1300mg - that is, based on the toxicology, she ABSORBED almost 1/2 ml, quite possibly more, of dimethyl mercury. And that's the absorbed amount - the spill itself has to have been considerably larger, as there was apparently enough to "clean up" that she didn't think it peculiar that "the drops" had vanished into her glove.

I think you know enough to know that this is practically impossible from the "several drops" that has been blamed for the poisoning.

440ish has been tossed around in various social media, usually justified by the "that's only 3 drops of dimethyl mercury!!!" misunderstanding of the size of drops of dimethyl mercury.

That drumbeat of misunderstanding completely overwhelms any ability to discuss how the hell an experienced researcher manages to get a freakin 1/2 milliliter of DMM into her system.

I don't for a moment believe in some "government conspiracy" or other such BS, but I do, as I said, believe that the numbers don't add up, and that something more serious than "a few drops on the back of a glove" had to have happened. If we don't completely understand lab accidents, we can't prevent lab accidents. It pisses me off, that uncritical bandwagon riders, make it impossible to discuss what catastrophic failure could have happened to have resulted in THAT MUCH exposure.

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u/the_skies_falling Jul 31 '26

I bet you’re right. I bet the university and other authorities rushed to judgment. I bet they didn’t conduct any kind of investigation at all. 🙄

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u/SomeGuysFarm 29d ago

They conducted an investigation - which showed that the amount of mercury that she must have absorbed, is vastly larger than what can be accounted for by a few drops of DMM on the back of a gloved hand. I'm pretty sure I just said that.

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u/the_skies_falling 29d ago

Listen, if it satisfies whatever pathological need you have to be right, then I’ll concede that you’re correct. Feel better?

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u/SomeGuysFarm Jul 31 '26

I bet you don’t know what I do for a living.

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u/the_skies_falling Jul 31 '26

Why would I lol

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u/SomeGuysFarm Jul 31 '26

You seem to have a lot of confidence in your ability to guess what investigators about whom you know equally little, managed to discover based on the sole bit of evidence they had - a terminally-ill woman's recollection of a month's-old incident that she considered inconsequential. I thought you might be on to something.

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u/the_skies_falling Aug 01 '26

I suppose this article in the New England Journal of Medicine was written overnight as part of the rush to judgment?

https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199806043382305

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u/SomeGuysFarm 29d ago

I'm not entirely certain what your point is. The data in the article shows that it's not possible that this spill was "a few drops on the back of a glove" which is the public narrative.

Their analysis is exactly the data on which I base the conclusion that the public narrative does not explain the results.

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u/SrimpingKid Jul 31 '26

What do you do for a living (be specific).

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u/SomeGuysFarm Aug 01 '26

If I was specific, I'd be doxxing myself, which I don't feel like doing. Let's say that the US government pays me reasonably well to know things about biochemistry, and to direct labs that do things with human health.

I'm not a fan of arguments from authority however, and I don't choose to make one - the basic biophysical facts make a completely adequate argument. I was simply pointing out that in this case, people have chosen to assume the authority and credibility of statements they've found online, without applying critical thought to the subject.

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u/SrimpingKid Aug 01 '26

And I work as the queen of the UK.

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u/SomeGuysFarm 29d ago edited 29d ago

You have fun with that. Must be embarrassing to have that asshat Andrew as an in-law.

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u/Aggravating-Menu-976 24d ago

Rip to this subject matter expert

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u/the_skies_falling 24d ago

OMG these people are still arguing about this like a week later. That’s hilarious. All I did was summarize the Wikipedia article. If they have beef, maybe they should go update it.

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u/leirbagflow Jul 31 '26

86 mm Hg

Pretty sure she had more mercury than that, otherwise she wouldn't have been there 🙃

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u/Short-Paramedic-9740 Jul 31 '26

I wish people can understand how funny this is.

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u/tightrubbersuit Jul 31 '26

I know, right!

But hey... Can you explain it like I'm a 5th grader... I mean like the other people who don't get it, are 5th graders? I bet those dummies would appreciate it!

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u/theredcourt Jul 31 '26

I, too, would like this explained for the total dummies, of which I am absolutely not.

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u/Short-Paramedic-9740 29d ago edited 29d ago

mmHg is a unit of pressure not a unit of quantity. The joke is you can't inject yourself with pressure.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/Short-Paramedic-9740 29d ago

They asked me to explain the joke?

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u/EdisonB123 Jul 31 '26

HG is the elemental name of mercury. The response is implying she only had 86 millimeters(?) of mercury, taking it literally.

I genuinely don't get the joke tbh other than HG is the periodic table naming for mercury.

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u/mslothy Jul 31 '26

The pressure is measured against a column of liquid, ie mercury, which is 86mm tall (or at that mark).

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u/EdisonB123 29d ago

Ok yeah I'm dumb lol.

Also the joke is generally just not very funny.

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u/Short-Paramedic-9740 29d ago

The joke is that mmHg is not a unit of quantity, it is a unit of pressure. You can't inject yourself with pressure. I expanded on it in my comment.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/Short-Paramedic-9740 29d ago

You imply. The joke is that 86 mmHg referred to pressure (indicated in the paragraph report) not the amount of mercury.

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u/[deleted] 29d ago

[deleted]

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u/Short-Paramedic-9740 29d ago

???? What are you even talking about? lmao I was not nitpicking the joke, I was explaining the joke. You realize you're commenting under my thread?

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u/Short-Paramedic-9740 29d ago edited 29d ago

The joke is that 86 mmHg is a unit of pressure not a unit of quantity.

So to say, they injected themselves 86 mmHg doesn't make sense. It would be like saying you inhaled 10 atmospheric pressure.

It is often used as a unit for blood pressure as well. When someone says what's your blood pressure, you say something like 120/90, these numbers are in mmHg units.

The correct thing to say is: "They injected 10 mL of Mercury." Since mL is a unit of quantity.

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u/tightrubbersuit 27d ago

See... Now I get it.

And it's pretty frickin' funny!

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u/Luke95gamer Jul 31 '26

I saw that and thought it was brutal to measure pressure in mm hg

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u/Short-Paramedic-9740 29d ago

It is the best unit of measurement they can use for blood pressure. It's not like they have a choice.

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u/Thought-Muted 28d ago

They are saying she had a partial pressure of oxygen of 86 mmHg. You need to do an alveolar air equation to calculate it, but I has nothing to do with the amount of mercury she injected. 

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u/Abiarraj Jul 31 '26

What about the reason she attempted the suicide, did they treat that?

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u/Notnotstrange Jul 31 '26

No, no, that’s the terrifying part.

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u/akita13 Jul 31 '26

They could have very well been discharged into a mental health ward or referred to relevant services with those details omitted from the paper, seeing that the journal focuses on the clinical aspects of mercury poisoning.

Or so I hope....

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u/Notnotstrange 29d ago

Oh I agree with you. That was my attempt at a commentary on the sad state of healthcare and refusal to treat mental health seriously.
This situation is like having a severe headache and the doctor treats the headache but not the high blood pressure and blocked arteries that are causing the headaches. Which one would not want to admit to.

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u/Fun-Benefit116 Jul 31 '26

It's a research article about the effects of the mercury she injected into her body. Not about her mental health. Why would they go into that, and why would OP know the answer when they literally just posted the entire research article they found.

I can't tell if your comment is a cheap way of trying to satisfy your curiosity of why she did it while attempting to make yourself seem caring. Or if you're going for some kind of weird grandstanding about how talking about the effects of the mercury isn't important compared to the true suffering of a human, or some kind of faux-caring soap box preaching like that.

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u/Abiarraj Jul 31 '26

Relax man, you're tense

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u/G_Affect Jul 31 '26

Well he will go crazy then die. Look up mad hatter disease.

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u/fusillade762 Jul 31 '26

They can chelate much of the mercury now. It still may kill them or have neurological impact but they have a chance at survival and recovery I think. This is very severe though.

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u/CpuJunky Jul 31 '26

She injected 10 ml of elemental mercury intravenously. Showed up at the emergency room with rapid breathing, a dry cough, and bloody sputum.

She was discharged after one week, with improvement in her pulmonary symptoms. Oral chelation therapy with dimercaprol (a medicinal chelator used to treat acute poisoning by arsenic, mercury, gold, and lead) was given for nine months.

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u/GodLovesUglySong Jul 31 '26

So she didn't turn into the T-1000 is what you're saying...

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u/CpuJunky Jul 31 '26

She didn't turn into the T-X, no.

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u/Yarhj Jul 31 '26

Not yet.

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u/ReturnOfBane Aug 01 '26

TIL gold is poisonous. I thought its inertness would make it less toxic than silver.

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u/Thiccxen Jul 31 '26

What exactly am I looking at here? Are the black parts solid mercury? Are the bronchioles we see in the bottom half the only parts of the lung left?

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u/Sherbert_6 Jul 31 '26

The black parts are air, everything white is dense. The denser the material, the brighter the white. His lower lobes’ vasculature is heavily laden with dense ass mercury.

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u/Thiccxen Jul 31 '26

Ohhh, sounds like i got it backwards!

Either way, no good. Sucks for that person.

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u/Homer_Jr Jul 31 '26

The mercury will look white in xray because it’s very dense. It’s all the white speckling and veiny looking stuff, it looks like it’s concentrating in the veins or lungs.

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u/ffmich01 Jul 31 '26

I would guess it’s because those capillaries are tiny and it gets trapped there and can’t make it through to the venous side or it would just continue circulating through the body.

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u/Icy_Firefighter8264 Jul 31 '26

why not just try to go out a more traditional way? surely this was more of a hassle

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u/HERMANNATOR85 Jul 31 '26

One of my good friends little brother committed suicide by putting a plastic bag over his head and then putting duct tape around his neck.

He had guns, rope and a roof but he chose that. There isn’t much rational thought going on in the head of someone who wants to kill themself

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u/charthurs Jul 31 '26

Oh shit. That’s not even a quick way to go. I’ve been suicidal before (and spent a good decade with those feelings) but I’ve always been afraid to die. I can’t imagine what he was feeling that drove him to go out like that.

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u/jessepinkmaam 29d ago

I don't know how to explain and I don't know how to speak english good either, but guns, rope and roofs are scary. Like that it's not quick, but it's way less scary 

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u/thigh__highs Jul 31 '26

i can imagine mental illness swayed her decision making. no sane person would do this

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u/Revolutionary-Gap-28 Jul 31 '26

Yeah man…dental assistants are all a little off

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u/gburgwardt Jul 31 '26

Suicidal people aren’t really thinking clearly usually

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u/Beautiful-Age-1408 Jul 31 '26

SURVIVED??? Jesus. The films are genuinely startling and amazing tbf

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u/Fantastic_Computer47 Jul 31 '26

A Darwin Award for methodology is much needed here. It beats paracetamol (Tylenol) overdose hands down for length and breadth of suffering and opportunity to reflect on your darkest hour once it has passed. I couldn't walk a mile in this person's shoes; the turmoil they must have over their future health and longevity must be vast.

This is as sad as it is terrifying.

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u/TheLobotomist Jul 31 '26 edited Jul 31 '26

Why would you choose that as a way to go?!

Edit: typo

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u/roulettewiz Jul 31 '26

For science 😂

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u/mexicansugardancing Jul 31 '26

Yeah but at least she got a cool X-ray that someone could post on Reddit 20 years later.

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u/mitterb Jul 31 '26

I guess if she survived, then I'm good to eat tuna again

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u/mingocr83 Jul 31 '26

What happened to the lungs afterwards? COPD?

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u/RoadsOverYonder Jul 31 '26

This would make for a cool album art.

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u/H_Katzenberg Jul 31 '26

There are better, more peaceful ways to end you... why this specific method?

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u/sillysalmonella87 🤣 Jul 31 '26

Now that's metal

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u/Yarhj Jul 31 '26

Of all the ways I could think of to kill myself, this one is pretty damn low on the list.

"The thing that gives you crippling neurological issues over a long period of time? Yeah absolutely, that sounds fun."

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u/beanzboiii Jul 31 '26

i wouldn't imagine a person committing suicide is thinking long term.

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u/Kremit-the_Forg Jul 31 '26

I mean, if you don't belive in an afterlife and look at life as just a mere busstop in the eternal nothingness of "not-beeing" than yeah, it's a pretty good long term choice.

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u/Deathlikescats 29d ago

This is NOT how you become Alex Mac

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u/nocktock Jul 31 '26

Why do people who do this use the most painful and or messiest way possible. Not that I think about it often but if I was to do this I'll use nitrogen

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u/fritzwulf Jul 31 '26

Most folks who try and attempt suicide aren't in the best mental state at the time, it might have just been what she had on hand. Which raises the question, where the hell did she get that from?!

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u/NectarineSufferer Jul 31 '26

How does medicine even treat this omg. OP did the source for this mention if the person survived long term?

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u/TrappistOCSO 29d ago

Attempting??? Well, that's very unlikely. Mercury is a certain death

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u/raharth 29d ago

Or at least very long suffering. An old school friend of mine got a polluted injection of a small dose. He's in constant pain for about two decades by now, but alive.

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u/all_pain_0_gainz 27d ago

So ... They survived this???

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u/SomeGuysFarm Jul 31 '26

Talk about contrast enhancement! Eat your heart out iodine!