I have a weird question. I got into mischief in high school (didn’t everybody?), many decades ago. Given that it was decades ago and nobody was seriously hurt (I’m quite sure I would have heard - we did have newspapers, radio, and TV back then and it wasn’t the last day of school so I would have heard through the grapevine as well) I don’t believe I am putting myself in any legal danger by admitting this.
Just how toxic is a 2-Mercaptoethanol spill? I got my hands on a bottle (I won’t say how) and since it stank I thought it would be a fun idea to dump it in some bookshelves in the school library. Long after the fact (like I said, units of time in this discussion are decades) I found out from the God of All Knowledge Wikipedia that the stuff is toxic :eek:. HOW toxic/dangerous is it?
For the knowledgeable scientists in the audience, you find that some idiot has dumped a whole bottle (don’t know the size - not particularly large) of 2-ME on your bookshelves. How badly do you want to crucify the culprit and how would you deal with the spill?
I saw the bookshelves in question out in the parking lot the next day, but I don’t know what they did prior to airing them out.
According to this Material Safety Data Sheet (MSDS) it is toxic and can be absorbed through the skin. The inhalation exposure section says to get to fresh air and monitor exposed people for breathing difficulties.
Overall, I’d say it was stupid to deliberately expose people. Given the smell, they probably didn’t breath it long and wouldn’t suffer any lasting effects.
Get out the sponges, wash the stuff up, then mix up a batch of nitrogen triiodide with which to decorate said idiot’s desk drawers.
Mercaptoethanol is commonly used in the electrophoresis of proteins.
People wear gloves, but no one gets terribly bent out of shape over minor B-Me spills.
It messes up disulfide bonds between protein chains, so it’ll help denature any proteins it comes into contact with. That said, it’s used in perms, or at least used to be, for just that purpose.
βME is pretty volatile, so it probably evaporated from that bookcase in pretty short order.
But it’s not super toxic. The odor is more of a concern in most labs. That skin LD50 quoted above is 150 mg/kg, which translates to 12 g for a 80 kg human – if you let it sit and absorb for a while.
(Personally I don’t find it that stinky – not pleasant, for sure, but not something that makes me gag at all.)
Same here. I recall the first time I got to smell that stuff at full strength. Most everyone else was OMG! that is so strong and nasty! To me it was much more “meh”. While my sniffer aint the greatest, it aint THAT bad overall. Wonder if there is a genetic component to not smelling it so much?
My friend and fellow chemist cannot tell the difference between the two enantiomers of Carvone - in fact, she only smells the spearmint form. The caraway form smells exactly the sam to her, so it wouldn’t surprise me if mercaptothanol was similar.
Some people don’t seem to smell when they’ve left the conc ammonia out either, so perhaps it’s just the ability to tune out certain smells.
and it wasn’t the last day of school so I would have heard through the grapevine as well) I don’t believe I am putting myself in any legal danger by admitting this.