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Post by urania93 on Apr 1, 2018 4:11:45 GMT -5
DHMO: the invisible killer Environmental organisations have not focused much on this serious threat yet, considering it secondary in respect with other great dangers such as elettrosmog and GMO, but the general awareness is quickly increasing. I am talking about the extremely dangerous dihydrogen monoxide (in the following, DHMO). Just like its cousin, the fearsome carbon monoxide, this substance is colourless, odorless and tasteless, and kills thousands of people every year for excessive environmental inhalation. You have to know that: - It is the main component of acid rains
- It contributes to greenhouse effect
- It contributes to soil erosion and deterioration of natural landscapes
- Measurable levels of DHMO have been verified in ice samples taken from both the Arctic and Antarctic ice caps
- It is largely employed in plants for nuclear power production
- It is employed as industrial solvent
- It was observed into cancer cells of terminally ill patients
- It can cause burns up to the 3rd degree
Its Material Safety Data Sheet reports: DHMO is a not-regulated product, even though it can react violently with some metals, such as sodium and potassium, with fluorine and with sulfuric acid. It produces an explosive gas with calcium carbide. It's recommended to avoid the contact with materials whose compatibility has not been ascertained yet. The Material Safety Data Sheet reports omits to underline that, when reacting with sodium, it develops large amounts of hydrogen, with the consequent risk of explosions. Some economists claim that banning DHMO would have terrible consequences on the world economy, but others underline that these economists are too close to WTO and to the International Monetary Fund for being unbiased. Some of them even work as advisers for large multinational corporation. Why no limit have been fixated yet? Maybe the situation will be clearer if considering that DHMO is largely employed for the production of Coca-Cola and other soft drinks. It becomes thus obvious that food multinational corporations cannot allow the general ban for this molecule. What to do? Some countries are moving already. In 2001 the staff of the New Zeland member of parliament Sue Kedgley answered to the request of a citizen for banning DHMO asserting to " completely agree with a campaign for banning this toxic substance from New Zeland". What would you do in order to face the feared DHMO? |
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Post by Lommaren on Apr 1, 2018 5:17:20 GMT -5
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Post by Babu on Apr 1, 2018 5:56:14 GMT -5
Diväteoxid is a relatively well known scientific name in Sweden. Oh, and I remember not long ago there was a girl who died from drinking a total of 5l of it as a part of a dare or something. Think it was a kid's drinking game or something.
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Post by rozenn on Apr 1, 2018 7:47:59 GMT -5
I recently tried an experiment. I added a few spoonfuls of DHMO to one of my favorite alcoholic drinks, pastis. Here's how it reacted, scary stuff:  |
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Post by Ariete on Apr 1, 2018 9:32:50 GMT -5
Yes, I suggest to refine the DHMO to C2H6O for safety reasons.
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Post by fæglèr on Apr 1, 2018 11:38:48 GMT -5
Unfortunately, I seem to have a slight DHMO addiction.  |
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Post by urania93 on Apr 2, 2018 4:43:24 GMT -5
Ok everyone, it was obviously an April's fool day fake new. You probably had even already heard it somewhere, because it was just the famous DHMO hoax. In particular I took the version from a Blog written by the chemist Dario Bressanini [1] [2], of which the most interesting part is actually the one I'm going to report today. The prank is based on the use of the scientific-sounding name of "dihydrogen monoxide", which the all of you immediately recognised to simply be water, immediately noticing how absurd the content of the first post was. Anyway, if a post like that was read by someone without any scientific knowledge, and with a more convincing frame, he or she could also be convinced about that. Furthermore, if I used a more complex molecule for writing the first post, let's say 1,3,7-Trimethylpurine-2,6-dione (which, by the way, it's lethal at high concentrations) it would have been harder even for people with some scientific knowledge to evaluate whether it made sense or not. What I want to underline is that all the information reported in the first post is true. Water contributes to green house effect, is an industrial solvent, is used in nuclear plants and is obviously present in cancer cells (and in all other cells as well). Anyway, the post is deliberately written for being misleading, it underlines only some facts and it hides all the rest with the precise porpoise of mislead you. It was also overly conspirationary, naming organisations like Monetary Fund and companies like Coca cola. A lot of scientific (mis)information is based on partial truth at the same way, underlining the points they want to prove and omitting all the rest, and on the way people instinctively evaluate risk. Let's make an example, taking into consideration the (true) statement: "DHMO is the main component of acid rains". This sentence is intended to make the reader think that DHMO is a bad thing, following a scheme like: - DHMO is the main component of acid rains - acid rain is bad --> DHMO is bad which, obviously, is a bad syllogism. With a further analysis the DHMO hoax it's immediately evident that it completely lack any reference to positive effects of DHMO, and of any costs-benefits analysis. The writer, by citing only the negative aspects, intends to impose his opinion to the reader, who isn't given all the necessary information for deciding for himself. This method is also used in the opposite way, by only citing the positive aspect for convincing people that something is good for them. As a conclusion, bad scientific information is based on many tricks and it can be hard to recognise. So the moral is: always be critical on what you read (in particular if the source is some weird web site). (By the way, 1,3,7-Trimethylpurine-2,6-dione, the lethal substance at high concentration, was just the IUPAC name for... caffeine). |
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Post by Lommaren on Apr 2, 2018 6:16:04 GMT -5
Honest now urania93, did you think someone would fall for it?  Forumers tend to be more intelligent than random people on the street though; kind of comes with the territory of knowing thousands of places and their climates  |
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Post by urania93 on Apr 2, 2018 11:35:29 GMT -5
Lommaren, if there are people who believe in chemtrails and homeopathy I would be nearly sure that quite a lot of people would fall for it (if it is proposed in a convincing enough way). To make research on the past uses of the DHMO hoax is quite challenging, because there is an incredibly high number of April's fool fake news and jokes, but it still seems that its effectiveness was demonstrated more than once. On wikipedia there is a whole paragraph about that [1].
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Post by Ariete on Apr 2, 2018 12:34:31 GMT -5
Encouraging: In February 2011, during the campaign of the Finnish parliamentary election, a voting advice application asked the candidates whether the availability of "hydric acid also known as dihydrogen monoxide" should be restricted. 49% of the candidates answered in favor of the restriction
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Post by Fägler on Apr 21, 2018 22:18:28 GMT -5
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