Horrifying Story

[Cindy]

Originally Posted by Jay

I still think that I am missing something to this story. Everyone seemed to be more concerned about the hazardous material getting around, but they never actually explained why it was so bad that they had trouble getting an autopsy done on him. This article was nothing short of painfully confusing after you figure out that the man died of a self-inflicted poisoning.

It took them a while to find out what the actual poison was, and how to treat everyone. The first hospital he went to is in a VERY small town. There is protocol involved in taking care of hazardous materials of any kind.

[AreYouReady?]

I would have put massive doses of activated charcoal into him. Activated charcoal adsorbs over 5000 toxins and chemicals and it is unknown what else it can adsorb. Chemicals and pesticides? Possible. It was worth a chance. The article doesn't say that they tried putting down an Naso-Gastric tube to try to pump out his stomach..and of which they could have introduced massive doses of activated charcoal.

Haz-mat is called in many cases. If one of the room sphygmomanometer (blood pressure) gauges accidentally broke, the room would be cleared and quarantined and Haz-mat would be called because the gauge contains mercury.

Did you know that if you break one of the squirrley new light bulbs, you are advised to call the EPA? They contain Mercury, which is highly toxic.

[Cindy]

The article said a 200 pound man dies in 30 minutes of ingesting this particular poison. So fairly quick acting.

[AreYouReady?]

Yeah...I saw that and wondered why if the man was still coherent, the paramedics didn't immediately try to get him to drink activated charcoal? It would not have hurt him at all since it is an adsorbent.

But since I wasn't there to see the incident, I suppose that would be easy for me to just talk about using charcoal from where I sit. It could be they were afraid of being contaminated too from something that they had absolutely no idea of what it was. Very understandable.

I remember many times being called down to the Emergency room not knowing what I was going to face when I got there. I have been covered in blood from wrecks. Seen open heart massage. Burn victims. I didn't see this one, but my co-worker went to ER for a code on a man who set himself on fire. His eyes, nose, mouth and ears were fused together and she could not get an open airway to do artificial respiration. They couldn't get an emergency tracheotomy done fast enough for him to survive. He probably would not have survived anyway because he had third degree (charred) burns over 80% of his body. We've seen people whose heads nearly cut off. Combine accidents where a kidney can be viewed from the wound. Broken bones from head to toe. Heart Attacks. People wild-out on drugs. Gunshot. Just about anything. Once we had a 22 month old who found and ate rat poison and her mamma didn't know it. She took her to the babysitters and the child collapsed there. It was heart-wrenching to see the big bleed inside her head on the C-T scan.

I am amazed that kind of highly poisonous pesticide was able to be in public possession. And he had so much of it...48 pounds? And only a smidgen of that could kill a full grown man in 30 minutes. That some powerful poison.

But then our country bans pesticides like DDT, then imports food from other countries that use DDT on the crops and sells those crops to us.

[Cindy]

Originally Posted by AreYouReady?

Yeah...I saw that and wondered why if the man was still coherent, the paramedics didn't immediately try to get him to drink activated charcoal? It would not have hurt him at all since it is an adsorbent.

But since I wasn't there to see the incident, I suppose that would be easy for me to just talk about using charcoal from where I sit. It could be they were afraid of being contaminated too from something that they had absolutely no idea of what it was. Very understandable.

I remember many times being called down to the Emergency room not knowing what I was going to face when I got there. I have been covered in blood from wrecks. Seen open heart massage. Burn victims. I didn't see this one, but my co-worker went to ER for a code on a man who set himself on fire. His eyes, nose, mouth and ears were fused together and she could not get an open airway to do artificial respiration. They couldn't get an emergency tracheotomy done fast enough for him to survive. He probably would not have survived anyway because he had third degree (charred) burns over 80% of his body. We've seen people whose heads nearly cut off. Combine accidents where a kidney can be viewed from the wound. Broken bones from head to toe. Heart Attacks. People wild-out on drugs. Gunshot. Just about anything. Once we had a 22 month old who found and ate rat poison and her mamma didn't know it. She took her to the babysitters and the child collapsed there. It was heart-wrenching to see the big bleed inside her head on the C-T scan.

I am amazed that kind of highly poisonous pesticide was able to be in public possession. And he had so much of it...48 pounds? And only a smidgen of that could kill a full grown man in 30 minutes. That some powerful poison.

But then our country bans pesticides like DDT, then imports food from other countries that use DDT on the crops and sells those crops to us.

You would think that stuff would break down over time, of course there is no way to know when he got it or how old it was.