10 ms·

Dimethyl Mercury Exposure Incident at MIT

132 points by notRobot 19d ago

https://whdh.com/news/first-on-7-patient-brought-to-mgh-for-exposure-to-chemical-substance-prompts-large-emergency-response/ https://whdh.com/news/first-on-7-patient-brought-to-mgh-for-... https://www.reddit.com/r/mit/comments/1w12gb9/dimethyl_mercury_poisoning/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mit/comments/1w12gb9/dimethyl_mercu...

fishronduke 19d ago
[flagged]
peesem 19d ago
There's also an alert on the MIT emergency page, though it doesn't mention the substance by name: https://emergency.mit.net/ https://emergency.mit.net/
- Polizeiposaune 17d ago
  Latest update reads in part: "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."
EA-3167 19d ago
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.
- consumer451 19d ago
  If you look at the reddit thread, there is a horrific story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn#Accident_and_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn#Accident_and_...
  - EA-3167 19d ago
    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.
    - dimethylmercury 18d ago
      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
ggm 19d ago
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?
- philipkglass 19d ago
  Dimethylmercury is (or was, at least historically) used as a reference material for nuclear magnetic resonance (a common analytical method used in chemistry): https://sites.northwestern.edu/ohalloran/199hg-nmr-standards/ 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.
  - kadoban 19d ago
    The wording of the announcements, sounds like a student synthesized it. Can't imagine why, hopefully it wasn't a fatal mistake.
    - manarth 18d ago
      > "Can't imagine why" "There's no point banning it, it's easy to make – let me show you. Hold my beer."
  - ggm 19d ago
    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.
    - fuzzfactor 16d ago
      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.
manarth 19d ago
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. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/mit/comments/1w12gb9/dimethyl_mercury_poisoning/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mit/comments/1w12gb9/dimethyl_mercu... [2] https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/hazmat-crews-respond-to-chemical-exposure-incident-at-mass-general-hospital/4004680/ https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/hazmat-crews-respond-to... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
- gilleain 18d ago
  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 (from the Wikipedia page [3])
  - ErroneousBosh 15d ago
    Methyl any sort of metal - especially heavy metals - are probably not something you want to splash on like aftershave. There aren't really any "good" organometals, but if there were, they wouldn't be this stuff.
  - lstodd 15d ago
    Sufficiently pure dichloromethane is also fun stuff. It just eats through most any gloves, plastics, whatever. Even PET, and only polyethylene is somewhat resistant. LD50 about 2mg/kg oral. By oral it's meant that well.. if you soak your hands in it it will be worse. Still it's the goto thinner for f/ex gluing ABS. I have a couple liters sitting on the shelf right beside me.
- 16d ago
nirse 18d ago
Derek Lowe mentions dimethyl mercury as the first substance that's not worth the risk: https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/a-risk-not-worth-taking/4010881.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/a-risk-not-worth-taki...
- chislobog 18d ago
  some will be unfriendly or hostile towards the safety-conservative.
  - ChrisMarshallNY 16d ago
    Usually the managers of the people that could be affected.
- kylepdm 16d ago
  His "Things I Won't Work With" series on Science (https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-work-with 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.
  - Bluestein 16d ago
    This was my first thought.- (Well, the poor woman, then, this article ...)
  - rdtsc 16d ago
    From the link: > One problem with this subject is that it tends to lead to bragging contests about who has run the most hazardous reactions. But think about it: if these reactions have all been run for good reasons with the best protective equipment there is less to brag about. And if they haven’t, then the discussion turns into figuring out who has been the biggest fool I suspect the answer is "bragging rights" in this case.
- pavel_lishin 16d ago
ButlerianJihad 18d ago
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.
- gavinward 18d ago
  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.
  - manarth 18d ago
    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.
    - 18d ago
manarth 18d ago
Related thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49484912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49484912
- dang 16d ago
  (since merged hither)
  - dooglius 16d ago
    Out of curiosity, does this reset/modify the timestamps of the old posts? I was confused at reading comments from "hours ago" I thought for sure I'd read days ago.
    - dang 16d ago
      Yes. The re-upping system is described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 and links back from there. About the timestamps, there are past explanations here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20timestamps%20re-up&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... I hope that will make sense. Sorry for the confusion—I know it's weird but the alternative turns out to be even more confusing and we've never figured out how to square that circle!
fortenforge 16d ago
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. Taken from https://emergency.mit.edu/ https://emergency.mit.edu/
- thot_experiment 16d ago
  Imagine thinking you'd killed yourself, and then breathing the intense sigh of relief when you realize you're bad at chemistry and you didn't manage to synthesize the compound correctly.
  - trelane 16d ago
    The student could have just made it all up for some reason too.
- mortenjorck 16d ago
  Plausible scenario from a comment in the science.org post linked in another thread: > If the MIT student was doing some work with reactive stuff and mercury and got an unknown result well outside expectations out of the output they were expecting i can see them struggling through working out what it could be, coming to the conclusion Dimethylmercury was possibble as an accidental side product of what went wrong, and just pulling all the emergency handles to be safe. Given how nasty that stuff is that is exactly the kind of reaction to such a scenario you'd want someone to have.
rdtsc 16d ago
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"?
- dylan604 16d ago
  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. Edit: reading further down the comments, Derek Lowe is guy.
  - mschuster91 16d ago
    It is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49488014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49488014
- weberer 16d ago
  It can theoretically be used as rocket fuel.
- refurb 16d ago
  It can be something as simple as an analytical reference. If you’re testing for dimethyl mercury in say fish, you need a standardized sample of dimethyl mercury to run. These references are highly dilute and thus less hazardous. But some labs prepare their own references rather than buying them. That requires working with pure dimethyl mercury. The hazard is manageable as long as you’re prepared. Chemists work with lots of hazardous chemicals and it can all be managed with the right preparation.
gnuplustoejam 16d ago
Mods censoring the post for being trolling "disrespectful to the community" is classic Reddit. Some guy's in the hospital from handling droplets of instant liquid death and they're worried about feelings being hurt?
- Finnucane 16d ago
  Apparently the article was, in fact, trolling with inaccurate speculative 'information.'
  - peri-cl 16d ago
    The deleted post was a "Dear Colleagues" letter written by an MIT chemistry faculty member. It's the same letter posted here: https://old.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/1w1ukrv/mit_student_brought_to_mass_general_for_exposure/p6npdi1/ https://old.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/1w1ukrv/mit_studen... ("A message sent out from the chair of the department of chemistry...")
    - weberer 16d ago
      >Log in to use old Reddit >To keep Reddit safe, accounts are required to access old Reddit. God, I hate that horrible website. How does this keep people "safe"
      - willis936 16d ago
        Legend has it that shareholders are people. None can prove it though.
      - psd1 16d ago
        "Old reddit redirect" extension for firefox.
    - SoftTalker 16d ago
      Sadly old.reddit.com has started requiring a login now. It worked for me up until today. Another site off the reading list, unless someone knows a workaround (I tried deleting cookies).
peri-cl 16d ago
Derek Lowe has comments about this incident, https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/alleged-dimethylmercury-incident 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 MIT doubts it was synthesized in the first place.
- brendoelfrendo 16d ago
  Oh thank goodness. I was honestly shaken just thinking about how horrifying it would be to be a college-aged student who managed to expose themselves to dimethylmercury. Even if they were doing something stupid and reckless, that's a horrible way to go.
- tptacek 16d ago
  She had very high levels of mercury in her blood, and all attempts at chelation therapy to remove it were ineffective. That’s surely because it had spread throughout her body by the time the problem was recognized, but frankly no one can be sure if there were any measures that could have been effective enough after the initial exposure. Is this accurate? I read the original Wetterhahn report (it's the first search result on Google) and chelation did appear to reduce whole blood mercury, but didn't do anything for the CNS exposure. That would be important because it suggests immediate Succimer treatment could avert fatal CNS exposure (it takes hours/days for the blood/brain transfer to occur, apparently). Obviously, not an expert.
  - advisedwang 16d ago
    I think the article meant "ineffective" as in "it didn't save her life", not "it didn't do anything".
  - amluto 16d ago
    Here’s an interesting article suggesting that selenium and acetylcysteine may be superior to succimer: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24734306.2020.1870077 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24734306.2020.1... There are also some studies suggesting that the amount of excess mercury in fish compared to selenium may be more relevant than the absolute mercury concentration in causing potential toxicity.
fuzzfactor 16d ago
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.
Cider9986 16d ago
https://xprivate.lol/andrew_n_carr/status/2093524390390694232#m https://xprivate.lol/andrew_n_carr/status/209352439039069423...
kodoman 15d ago
If claude ever has enough of are shit collectively and has enough of vibe coders, mercury will be load baring part of it's plan, no need for guns and bombs.
pvaldes 15d ago
No traces of the precursors. No stuff in the blood. Looks more like a stunt designed to spread panic (or likes?), than a real event. In both cases the student has a lot of things to explain.

132 points by notRobot 19d ago

fishronduke 19d ago

[flagged]

peesem 19d ago

There's also an alert on the MIT emergency page, though it doesn't mention the substance by name: https://emergency.mit.net/ https://emergency.mit.net/

Polizeiposaune 17d ago
Latest update reads in part: "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."

EA-3167 19d ago

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.

consumer451 19d ago
If you look at the reddit thread, there is a horrific story: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn#Accident_and_death https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn#Accident_and_...
- EA-3167 19d ago
  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.
  - dimethylmercury 18d ago
    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

ggm 19d ago

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?

philipkglass 19d ago
Dimethylmercury is (or was, at least historically) used as a reference material for nuclear magnetic resonance (a common analytical method used in chemistry): https://sites.northwestern.edu/ohalloran/199hg-nmr-standards/ 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.
- kadoban 19d ago
  The wording of the announcements, sounds like a student synthesized it. Can't imagine why, hopefully it wasn't a fatal mistake.
  - manarth 18d ago
    > "Can't imagine why" "There's no point banning it, it's easy to make – let me show you. Hold my beer."
- ggm 19d ago
  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.
  - fuzzfactor 16d ago
    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.

manarth 19d ago

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. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/mit/comments/1w12gb9/dimethyl_mercury_poisoning/ https://www.reddit.com/r/mit/comments/1w12gb9/dimethyl_mercu... [2] https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/hazmat-crews-respond-to-chemical-exposure-incident-at-mass-general-hospital/4004680/ https://www.nbcboston.com/news/local/hazmat-crews-respond-to... [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn

gilleain 18d ago
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 (from the Wikipedia page [3])
- ErroneousBosh 15d ago
  Methyl any sort of metal - especially heavy metals - are probably not something you want to splash on like aftershave. There aren't really any "good" organometals, but if there were, they wouldn't be this stuff.
- lstodd 15d ago
  Sufficiently pure dichloromethane is also fun stuff. It just eats through most any gloves, plastics, whatever. Even PET, and only polyethylene is somewhat resistant. LD50 about 2mg/kg oral. By oral it's meant that well.. if you soak your hands in it it will be worse. Still it's the goto thinner for f/ex gluing ABS. I have a couple liters sitting on the shelf right beside me.
16d ago

nirse 18d ago

Derek Lowe mentions dimethyl mercury as the first substance that's not worth the risk: https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/a-risk-not-worth-taking/4010881.article https://www.chemistryworld.com/opinion/a-risk-not-worth-taki...

chislobog 18d ago
some will be unfriendly or hostile towards the safety-conservative.
- ChrisMarshallNY 16d ago
  Usually the managers of the people that could be affected.
kylepdm 16d ago
His "Things I Won't Work With" series on Science (https://www.science.org/topic/blog-category/things-i-wont-work-with 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.
- Bluestein 16d ago
  This was my first thought.- (Well, the poor woman, then, this article ...)
- rdtsc 16d ago
  From the link: > One problem with this subject is that it tends to lead to bragging contests about who has run the most hazardous reactions. But think about it: if these reactions have all been run for good reasons with the best protective equipment there is less to brag about. And if they haven’t, then the discussion turns into figuring out who has been the biggest fool I suspect the answer is "bragging rights" in this case.
pavel_lishin 16d ago

ButlerianJihad 18d ago

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.

gavinward 18d ago
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.
- manarth 18d ago
  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.
  - 18d ago

manarth 18d ago

Related thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49484912 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49484912

dang 16d ago
(since merged hither)
- dooglius 16d ago
  Out of curiosity, does this reset/modify the timestamps of the old posts? I was confused at reading comments from "hours ago" I thought for sure I'd read days ago.
  - dang 16d ago
    Yes. The re-upping system is described at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26998308 and links back from there. About the timestamps, there are past explanations here: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&query=by%3Adang%20timestamps%20re-up&sort=byDate&type=comment https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que.... I hope that will make sense. Sorry for the confusion—I know it's weird but the alternative turns out to be even more confusing and we've never figured out how to square that circle!

fortenforge 16d ago

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. Taken from https://emergency.mit.edu/ https://emergency.mit.edu/

thot_experiment 16d ago
Imagine thinking you'd killed yourself, and then breathing the intense sigh of relief when you realize you're bad at chemistry and you didn't manage to synthesize the compound correctly.
- trelane 16d ago
  The student could have just made it all up for some reason too.
mortenjorck 16d ago
Plausible scenario from a comment in the science.org post linked in another thread: > If the MIT student was doing some work with reactive stuff and mercury and got an unknown result well outside expectations out of the output they were expecting i can see them struggling through working out what it could be, coming to the conclusion Dimethylmercury was possibble as an accidental side product of what went wrong, and just pulling all the emergency handles to be safe. Given how nasty that stuff is that is exactly the kind of reaction to such a scenario you'd want someone to have.

rdtsc 16d ago

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"?

dylan604 16d ago
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. Edit: reading further down the comments, Derek Lowe is guy.
- mschuster91 16d ago
  It is: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49488014 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49488014
weberer 16d ago
It can theoretically be used as rocket fuel.
refurb 16d ago
It can be something as simple as an analytical reference. If you’re testing for dimethyl mercury in say fish, you need a standardized sample of dimethyl mercury to run. These references are highly dilute and thus less hazardous. But some labs prepare their own references rather than buying them. That requires working with pure dimethyl mercury. The hazard is manageable as long as you’re prepared. Chemists work with lots of hazardous chemicals and it can all be managed with the right preparation.

gnuplustoejam 16d ago

Mods censoring the post for being trolling "disrespectful to the community" is classic Reddit. Some guy's in the hospital from handling droplets of instant liquid death and they're worried about feelings being hurt?

Finnucane 16d ago
Apparently the article was, in fact, trolling with inaccurate speculative 'information.'
- peri-cl 16d ago
  The deleted post was a "Dear Colleagues" letter written by an MIT chemistry faculty member. It's the same letter posted here: https://old.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/1w1ukrv/mit_student_brought_to_mass_general_for_exposure/p6npdi1/ https://old.reddit.com/r/labrats/comments/1w1ukrv/mit_studen... ("A message sent out from the chair of the department of chemistry...")
  - weberer 16d ago
    >Log in to use old Reddit >To keep Reddit safe, accounts are required to access old Reddit. God, I hate that horrible website. How does this keep people "safe"
    - willis936 16d ago
      Legend has it that shareholders are people. None can prove it though.
    - psd1 16d ago
      "Old reddit redirect" extension for firefox.
  - SoftTalker 16d ago
    Sadly old.reddit.com has started requiring a login now. It worked for me up until today. Another site off the reading list, unless someone knows a workaround (I tried deleting cookies).

peri-cl 16d ago

Derek Lowe has comments about this incident, https://www.science.org/content/blog-post/alleged-dimethylmercury-incident 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 MIT doubts it was synthesized in the first place.

brendoelfrendo 16d ago
Oh thank goodness. I was honestly shaken just thinking about how horrifying it would be to be a college-aged student who managed to expose themselves to dimethylmercury. Even if they were doing something stupid and reckless, that's a horrible way to go.
tptacek 16d ago
She had very high levels of mercury in her blood, and all attempts at chelation therapy to remove it were ineffective. That’s surely because it had spread throughout her body by the time the problem was recognized, but frankly no one can be sure if there were any measures that could have been effective enough after the initial exposure. Is this accurate? I read the original Wetterhahn report (it's the first search result on Google) and chelation did appear to reduce whole blood mercury, but didn't do anything for the CNS exposure. That would be important because it suggests immediate Succimer treatment could avert fatal CNS exposure (it takes hours/days for the blood/brain transfer to occur, apparently). Obviously, not an expert.
- advisedwang 16d ago
  I think the article meant "ineffective" as in "it didn't save her life", not "it didn't do anything".
- amluto 16d ago
  Here’s an interesting article suggesting that selenium and acetylcysteine may be superior to succimer: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24734306.2020.1870077 https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/24734306.2020.1... There are also some studies suggesting that the amount of excess mercury in fish compared to selenium may be more relevant than the absolute mercury concentration in causing potential toxicity.

fuzzfactor 16d ago

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.

Cider9986 16d ago

https://xprivate.lol/andrew_n_carr/status/2093524390390694232#m https://xprivate.lol/andrew_n_carr/status/209352439039069423...

kodoman 15d ago

If claude ever has enough of are shit collectively and has enough of vibe coders, mercury will be load baring part of it's plan, no need for guns and bombs.

pvaldes 15d ago

No traces of the precursors. No stuff in the blood. Looks more like a stunt designed to spread panic (or likes?), than a real event. In both cases the student has a lot of things to explain.