Speaker 1: She turned her head from side to side with a
Speaker 1: gentle movement full of agony, while constantly opening her mouth
Speaker 1: as if something very heavy were weighing upon her tongue.
Speaker 1: At eight o'clock, the vomiting began again. Then she began
Speaker 1: to groan faintly. At first, her shoulders were shaken by
Speaker 1: a strong shuddering, and she was growing paler than the
Speaker 1: sheets in which her clenched fingers buried themselves. Her unequal
Speaker 1: pulse was now almost imperceptible. Drops of sweat oozed from
Speaker 1: her bluish face that seemed as if rigid in the
Speaker 1: exhalations of a metallic vapor. Her teeth chattered, her dilated
Speaker 1: eyes looked vaguely about her, and to all questions she
Speaker 1: replied only with a shake of the head. She even
Speaker 1: smiled once or twice. Gradually, her moaning grew louder. A
Speaker 1: hollow shriek burst from her. She pretended she was better
Speaker 1: and that she would get up. Presently, she was seized
Speaker 1: with convulsions and cried out, ah, my god, it is horrible.
Speaker 1: Then the symptom ceased for a moment. She seemed less agitated,
Speaker 1: and at every insignificant word, at every respiration a little
Speaker 1: more easy, he regained hope. His colleague was by no
Speaker 1: means of this opinion, and, as he said of himself,
Speaker 1: never beating about the bush, he prescribed an emetic in
Speaker 1: order to empty the stomach completely. She soon began vomiting blood.
Speaker 1: Her lips became drawn, her limbs were convulsed, her whole
Speaker 1: body covered with brown spots, and her pulse slipped beneath
Speaker 1: the fingers like a stretched thread, like a harpstring, nearly breaking.
Speaker 1: After this, she began to scream horribly. She cursed the poison,
Speaker 1: railed at it, and implored it to be quick, and
Speaker 1: thrust away with her stiffened arms everything that Charles in
Speaker 1: more agony than herself, tried to make her drink. Emma,
Speaker 1: her chin sunken upon her breast, had her eyes inordinately
Speaker 1: wide open, and her poor hands wandered over the sheets
Speaker 1: with that hideous and soft movement of the dying that
Speaker 1: seems as if they wanted already to cover themselves with
Speaker 1: the shroud. Her chest soon began panting rapidly. The whole
Speaker 1: of her tongue protruded from her mouth. Her eyes, as
Speaker 1: they rolled, grew paler like the two globes of a
Speaker 1: lamp that is going out, so that one might have
Speaker 1: thought her already dead, but for the fearful laboring of
Speaker 1: her ribs, shaken by violent breathing, as if the soul
Speaker 1: were struggling to free itself. Emma raised herself like a
Speaker 1: galvanized corpse, her hair undone, her eyes fixed staring. She
Speaker 1: fell back upon the mattress in a convulsion. They all
Speaker 1: drew near. She was dead.
Speaker 2: Aye, yeah, yea yi Aaron.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so that was heavily edited down from like the
Speaker 1: last chapter. Sorry for the spoilers, but the book has
Speaker 1: been out since the eighteen fifties. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert.
Speaker 3: And yeah, the.
Speaker 1: Lead character dies of arsenic poisoning self inflicted. Wow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I have a question, Okay that book. Does she
Speaker 2: take arsenic like for a long time or does she
Speaker 2: just like take a big dose of it.
Speaker 1: She takes a big dose of it from what I
Speaker 1: can tell. I attempted to read it, but I didn't
Speaker 1: start it early enough and I gave up.
Speaker 2: Yeah that's fair, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm excited to see how the description there stacks
Speaker 1: up against what we know about arsenic poisoning. From the
Speaker 1: biology section.
Speaker 2: Yeah, me too, Aaron, So.
Speaker 1: Maybe not super close cool? Maybe No, I mean, come on,
Speaker 1: it's a novel. You have to allow some literary license, right.
Speaker 2: One hundred percent?
Speaker 1: Yeah, Okay, let's let's dive in. Hi, I'm erin.
Speaker 2: Welsh and I'm erin allman updight.
Speaker 1: And this is this podcast will kill You, And.
Speaker 2: Today we're talking about arsenic.
Speaker 1: Obviously, obviously it's going to be really interesting. There's a
Speaker 1: lot of fun truvy. Yeah, I'm thrilled to learn about
Speaker 1: how it works. But first, should we is it time?
Speaker 2: It can quarantin any time?
Speaker 3: It is?
Speaker 1: What are we drinking this week?
Speaker 2: This week we're drinking the King.
Speaker 1: We're drinking the King, the actual King, the actual King.
Speaker 1: Arsenic is commonly known as the King of Poisons and
Speaker 1: also the poison.
Speaker 2: Of Kings, which I did not know and I really love.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so we just decided to keep it simple
Speaker 1: and keep it sweet with the King.
Speaker 2: The King and what's in the King erin.
Speaker 1: What's in the King is essentially a Madori sour, because yeah,
Speaker 1: we had to have something green, because, as you'll learn,
Speaker 1: arsenic was used as a colorant for like a different
Speaker 1: shades of Green a lot during the nineteenth century, and yeah,
Speaker 1: Madori is hits, Ticks that Box and Harry Green. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and essentially Immadori Sour is Majori lemon juice, limejuice, soda water.
Speaker 1: And we'll post the full recipe for the King as
Speaker 1: well as the non alcoholic place Marita on our website
Speaker 1: This podcast will Kill You dot Com, as well as
Speaker 1: on all of our social media channels.
Speaker 2: On our website This Podcast will Kill You dot Com.
Speaker 2: The things that you can find there are numerous. They
Speaker 2: include our merch and our bookshop dot org affiliate account,
Speaker 2: and our Goodbeats list, as well as Bloodmobile, our music
Speaker 2: and transcripts for all of our episodes, and all of
Speaker 2: the sources that we use in every episode. You can
Speaker 2: find our Patreon, you can find really you name it,
Speaker 2: it's probably on our website.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true. All right. I think that's all
Speaker 1: the business that we have. So can we get started?
Speaker 2: I would love to right after this break. So, Aaron,
Speaker 2: when I started researching for Arsenic, immediately right off the bat,
Speaker 2: I got really heavy mercury vibes, meaning I was way
Speaker 2: out of my lee. And turns out that we don't
Speaker 2: have a lot of specifics, just like with mercury. Okay,
Speaker 2: but I will tell you everything that I learned and
Speaker 2: then can't wait for your questions that I probably won't
Speaker 2: know the answer to.
Speaker 1: Okay, I can't wait to ask him.
Speaker 2: I know. My favorite part so Arsenic is a meta.
Speaker 2: What is a metaloid? You may ask, because that's certainly
Speaker 2: what I ask everyone, because chemistry really is something that
Speaker 2: makes me nervous. But I'm gonna do my best, and
Speaker 2: it means that I'll explain it as if you know nothing,
Speaker 2: because we all know nothing. Let us go. A metaloid
Speaker 2: is not quite a metal and not quite a non
Speaker 2: metal when we look at the periodic table of elements.
Speaker 2: So I feel like most people probably have a sense
Speaker 2: of what a metal is, even if you don't remember
Speaker 2: back to your high school chemistry class, like what the
Speaker 2: definition is. If you give somebody a chunk of something
Speaker 2: and say is this metal or no, they'll be like, hmm,
Speaker 2: is it shiny, is it solid? Does it look like metal?
Speaker 2: Et cetera. So those are the kinds of things that
Speaker 2: make a metal a metal, right. They're generally shiny or
Speaker 2: metallic or lustrous. Metals are generally good conductors of heat
Speaker 2: and electricity. Non metals can be anything, but in general
Speaker 2: they're not as good of conductors. They're less good than metals,
Speaker 2: and metalloids are somewhere in between. It turns out that
Speaker 2: there's no good consensus definition of what makes a metaloid
Speaker 2: a metaloid. It's not a very clear term, but it's
Speaker 2: still used in a lot of chemistry textbooks, and the
Speaker 2: most common elements on the periodic table that are considered
Speaker 2: metaloids are boron, silicon, germanium, antimony, tellurium, and of course arsenic.
Speaker 2: So Arsenic is an element like carbon, or lead or mercury.
Speaker 2: It just happens to be somewhere in between carbon and
Speaker 2: lead and mercury in that it's not a non metal
Speaker 2: and not a metal. It's a metaloid, and much like carbon, arsenic,
Speaker 2: as it turns out, exists in what are called different allotropes.
Speaker 2: I learned so many interesting facts about arsenic.
Speaker 1: I have not come across that word, but I love it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a really fun word. It basically means that
Speaker 2: it can form different crystalline structures that look differently the
Speaker 2: same way if you think of carbon, atoms can form
Speaker 2: diamonds or graphite, right, same atoms, different structure, looks totally different.
Speaker 2: In the case of arsenic, there's gray arsenic, black arsenic,
Speaker 2: and yellow arsenic. Gray is the form that looks the
Speaker 2: most like a metal and tends to act the most
Speaker 2: like a metal. It can be a semiconductor, so that's
Speaker 2: very useful in a lot of industrial settings, which I'll
Speaker 2: get to, and arsenic is often used in metal alloys
Speaker 2: for that reason. And just like our friend and another
Speaker 2: element that we've talked about on this podcast, mercury, arsenic
Speaker 2: also exists across the Earth in various compounds, both organic
Speaker 2: compounds like carbon based compounds, and inorganic or no carbon
Speaker 2: involved compounds. And if you remember our mercury episode as
Speaker 2: well as our lead episode, which was a very long
Speaker 2: time ago. Now, the toxicity of elements like arsenic depends
Speaker 2: in part on what form we get exposed to, as
Speaker 2: well as of course whether we're being exposed to small
Speaker 2: amounts over long periods of time, like a chronic exposure,
Speaker 2: or a big hefty dose all at once, like an
Speaker 2: acute poisoning. And it turns out that with arsenic, this
Speaker 2: is very important. The type of arsenic that you're exposed
Speaker 2: to really determines the toxicity, and being not a chemist,
Speaker 2: I tried to not get too bogged down in oxidation
Speaker 2: states and valences, but it turns out that that's what's
Speaker 2: really important when it comes to arsenic. So the basics
Speaker 2: look like this. Arsenic is close to phosphorus on the
Speaker 2: periodic table, and so in some forms when it's oxidized
Speaker 2: in a certain way, it's called a pentavalant form. It's
Speaker 2: an inorganic form of arsenic that's called arsenate, and it
Speaker 2: really can resemble phosphate, which is a form of phosphorus,
Speaker 2: and phosphate in our bodies is a pretty integral part
Speaker 2: of human biology. It's the p in our atp adentizene triphosphate,
Speaker 2: and so much like with lead and mercury, what we
Speaker 2: see with arsenic is that the toxicity arises from its
Speaker 2: ability to mimic other compounds that our body normally uses,
Speaker 2: and or its ability to hijack various enzymes or metabolic
Speaker 2: pathways because of these similarities.
Speaker 1: It's so interesting that it does that. Because we talk
Speaker 1: about infectious diseases primarily on the podcast, although maybe not
Speaker 1: as much anymore, we think of these pathogens as striving
Speaker 1: to reproduce and survive, and that's why they cause infection,
Speaker 1: that's why they make us sick. But with arsenic, it's
Speaker 1: just like, here's this inert thing that is just happens
Speaker 1: to be extremely deadly.
Speaker 2: Right exactly. It just it just happens to have an
Speaker 2: effect in our bodies because it's similar to things that
Speaker 2: our body actually needs and uses, but not because we
Speaker 2: need it in any way, and it's just it just
Speaker 2: happens to be there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's oh, it's very interesting. Yeah, I know.
Speaker 2: So that's one way that arsenic can exert its toxicity
Speaker 2: when it's in its oxidized pentavalent form. Another probably even
Speaker 2: more common and more toxic form of arsenic is called arsenite,
Speaker 2: and this is the trivalent form. This is what happens
Speaker 2: when arsenic is in a reducing environment, and this, in
Speaker 2: a very similar way, disrupts a number of our biological processes,
Speaker 2: but not by mimicking phosphate in this case, but by
Speaker 2: having a high affinity for what are called thiols or
Speaker 2: self hydral groups, so sulfur and hydrogen. Turns out that
Speaker 2: our body has a lot of proteins and enzymes that
Speaker 2: have these sulfur hydrogen groups on them that are really
Speaker 2: integral to things like I don't know, ar citric acid cycle,
Speaker 2: which makes ATP to power our cells, and a whole
Speaker 2: host of other very basic and important metabolic functions. So
Speaker 2: that's kind of the most basic look at arsenic.
Speaker 1: And in terms of whether it happens to mimic thiols
Speaker 1: or phosphate, that just is in the way that it's formed.
Speaker 2: These it's basically just depends on which form of arsenic
Speaker 2: you're exposed to, okay, and which form you're exposed to
Speaker 2: will depend on on what that arsenic is doing in
Speaker 2: the environment, whether it's a high oxygen environment or a
Speaker 2: low oxygen environment, blah blah blah, And that is all.
Speaker 2: All of those are inorganic forms of arsenic. Organic arsenic
Speaker 2: organic compounds that contain arsenic can be found in really
Speaker 2: high concentrations in things like shellfish. But it turns out
Speaker 2: if we get exposed to arsenic that's already bound to
Speaker 2: organic compounds, we actually don't see a lot of effects
Speaker 2: from it. It actually is very non toxic, which is
Speaker 2: interesting and different than what we saw in mercury, which
Speaker 2: I think is just fascinating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, and these different forms of arsenic and the
Speaker 1: different things they mimic and all of that that must
Speaker 1: lead to different symptoms if it's disrupting different parts, or
Speaker 1: is it, because it's all kind of in the same pathway.
Speaker 2: So let's get into that, shall we Let's get into
Speaker 2: the symptoms and then maybe it'll kind of get at
Speaker 2: that question. Okay, So when we encounter arsenic in any
Speaker 2: of these various forms, we generally absorb it into our
Speaker 2: bloodstream and it goes to anywhere in our body, but
Speaker 2: it's often stored in places like our liver, our heart,
Speaker 2: our lungs, our kidneys are really important for excreting arsenic.
Speaker 2: It can also be found in our skin. Really, it's everywhere,
Speaker 2: and our bodies have a lot of enzymes that actually
Speaker 2: function to break down arsenic, to metabolize it into a
Speaker 2: form that we can then excrete it. But it turns
Speaker 2: out that one of these forms, which is known as
Speaker 2: methyl arsenite or monomethyl arsenite blah blah blah, this form
Speaker 2: is also very toxic. So our bodies are dealing with
Speaker 2: arsenic by quote breaking it down, methylating it really, but
Speaker 2: then that is also toxic, so it doesn't just get
Speaker 2: rid of it automatically, So then what happens to it
Speaker 2: holds up in our bodies and causes all these symptoms
Speaker 2: that I'm about to talk about. Oh oh oh, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: so it acts just like arsenic, even though organic arsenic
Speaker 2: from a shellfish doesn't weird. I know, it's so bizarre.
Speaker 2: So we get exposed to arsenic generally via food or water,
Speaker 2: so contamination of food sources and drinking water from arsenic,
Speaker 2: which comes from honestly anywhere. Like it's found in the soil,
Speaker 2: it is ubiquitous across this earth, although as we'll see
Speaker 2: later on, it's certainly not evenly distributed across the globe.
Speaker 2: But it can be found in groundwater kind of worldwide
Speaker 2: and oral root. So ingesting it is the primary way
Speaker 2: that people get exposed. In industrial settings. You can get
Speaker 2: exposed via inhalation, and it's unclear whether you can really
Speaker 2: absorb much of it through your skin. It seems like
Speaker 2: mostly no. But if your hand it all day, all
Speaker 2: the time, and you have it on your skin, you
Speaker 2: can potentially then ingest.
Speaker 1: It from your hands.
Speaker 2: But everyone is being exposed to arsenic at at least
Speaker 2: some level, so let's talk about what we see in
Speaker 2: terms of symptoms, because as with everything we've talked about
Speaker 2: in terms of talksins on this podcast, the dose determines
Speaker 2: the poison or whatever.
Speaker 1: Right, well said, thank.
Speaker 2: You, So our first hand account perhaps described an acute
Speaker 2: arsenic poisoning episode. And I say perhaps because Aaron that
Speaker 2: firsthand didn't sound like what I'm about to describe.
Speaker 1: That's so funny because when I came across it in
Speaker 1: a book I read about arsenic for this episode, it
Speaker 1: was like yeah, and then you know, in Madame Bovriy
Speaker 1: it's actually a very excellent example of what arsenic poisoning is.
Speaker 2: Like, how fascinating. Maybe I just I will say that
Speaker 2: most of the papers that I read really did not
Speaker 2: focus on acute arsenic poisoning. It was more chronic that
Speaker 2: makes Yeah, the highlight is very much on all the chronics.
Speaker 2: So maybe I just didn't find good enough like old
Speaker 2: timey descriptions of arsenic poisoning.
Speaker 1: I mean, just pick up basically any Agatha Christie novel
Speaker 1: and your friend you'll find it in there.
Speaker 2: Well, what I found is that arsenic poisoning in some
Speaker 2: ways can look a lot like a lot of other
Speaker 2: poisonings in that within a matter of minutes to hours
Speaker 2: after ingestion, you have intense abdominal pain. You have a
Speaker 2: lot of GI symptoms, a lot of abdominal pain, vomiting, diarrhea.
Speaker 2: The diarrhea can actually be very profound. I saw it
Speaker 2: described as choleralike, remember back to that episode. So that's
Speaker 2: like a rice water, just like pure water stool, and basically,
Speaker 2: in high enough doses, this arsenic is kind of just
Speaker 2: ripping its way through your intestine eucosa. So you're losing
Speaker 2: a lot through your guts. And because of all these losses,
Speaker 2: you can end up seeing high potension, so drops in
Speaker 2: your blood pressure which can be from dehydration and volume
Speaker 2: loss from this profuse GI losses. This can then cause
Speaker 2: electrolyte abnormalities because you're losing your electrolytes through your diarrhea,
Speaker 2: through your vomiting, and that can cause your heart to
Speaker 2: stop functioning properly because without the right balance of electrolytes,
Speaker 2: your heart can't send the signals that it needs to
Speaker 2: to beat in sync. So then you can have death
Speaker 2: because of arrhythmias. If you have a high enough exposure.
Speaker 2: There also can be a lot of neurologic symptoms, but
Speaker 2: from what I read, usually, though not always, the neurologic
Speaker 2: symptoms tend to happen more like weeks days or weeks
Speaker 2: after exposure. Can cause things like numbness, tingling, muscle cramping,
Speaker 2: a lot of different neurologic effects, but these tend to
Speaker 2: not be as acute onset as the GI.
Speaker 1: Effects, and these neurological symptoms are part of the acute thing.
Speaker 1: It's just part of the recovery phase.
Speaker 2: Not necessarily recovery, but there also can be seen in
Speaker 2: more like subacute So maybe you're exposed to like kind
Speaker 2: of high doses for a number of days in a
Speaker 2: row or something like that, and you can even see
Speaker 2: them after very very long term exposures. So it's kind
Speaker 2: of just like arsenic is having its effect on your
Speaker 2: nervous system, which we'll talk about in more detail, but
Speaker 2: it's happening kind of all at once after that exposure,
Speaker 2: once it's made its way into your nervous system.
Speaker 1: Right, Okay, what's the half life of arsenic in the body?
Speaker 2: Great question. It can vary. It tends to be on
Speaker 2: the order of many hours to a few days, like
Speaker 2: two to four days. That's for the inorganic forms, But
Speaker 2: once it's methylated in our bodies, once our body tries
Speaker 2: to break it down, it can actually persist for a
Speaker 2: bit longer.
Speaker 1: Interesting. Yeah, interesting that like our bodies, Like, what is
Speaker 1: the benefit of our bodies actually breaking down arsenic Well.
Speaker 2: That's a very good question. I think it seems to
Speaker 2: make it easier to excrete via our kidneys. Okay, However,
Speaker 2: it also can have bad effects on our kidneys. Yeah,
Speaker 2: And I think it's probably in part just our body's
Speaker 2: natural reaction to stuff that gets absorbed. Right, our body
Speaker 2: methylates things, It sees something and it's like, I'm gonna
Speaker 2: methylate you. Hey, you look kind of like a phosphate.
Speaker 1: Poop poop, you know, right, Okay.
Speaker 2: So it's not necessarily Yeah, I don't know, it's a
Speaker 2: it's a good it's a good question. So that's kind
Speaker 2: of the acute phase. From what I read, Acute poisoning,
Speaker 2: especially at high enough doses to result in death, tends
Speaker 2: to happen at levels very very high. So I hate
Speaker 2: environment mental levels because it's like parts per billion and
Speaker 2: micrograms per et cetera. But sixty thousand parts per per billion,
Speaker 2: which is sixty thousand micrograms per liter.
Speaker 1: I can't, I can't imagine. It's very difficult to visualize
Speaker 1: it is.
Speaker 2: It is. That level is about ten thousand times higher
Speaker 2: than eighty percent of the drinking water in the US,
Speaker 2: for example. So it's like really really high doses, okay,
Speaker 2: but even much lower doses, like three hundred to thirty
Speaker 2: thousand parts per billion could cause pretty significant effects, right,
Speaker 2: like make you feel pretty sick.
Speaker 1: Right, But there is a level as a safe level,
Speaker 1: because our body will methylate it and kind of kick
Speaker 1: it out of our systems and excrete it.
Speaker 2: Right. The World Health Organization has the kind of provisional
Speaker 2: level of arsenic in drinking water, which is the most
Speaker 2: like ubiquitous source, and so the one that's the most
Speaker 2: has has that level attached to it is ten ten
Speaker 2: micrograms per liter or ten parts per billion. Okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: so that's the number. So we're talking about sixty thousand.
Speaker 1: Like, that's a lot, that's a lot. That's a lot.
Speaker 2: It's a lot more. But that's kind of the acute poisoning.
Speaker 2: It's pretty rare nowadays. What's much more common is that
Speaker 2: someone is exposed to levels that are higher than that
Speaker 2: ten parts per billion, but still low, like between fifty
Speaker 2: and one hundred say, for example. So people who are
Speaker 2: exposed to this lower level but still high level of
Speaker 2: arsenic over a prolonged period of time. One of the
Speaker 2: most characteristic things that we can see is pigmentation changes
Speaker 2: in the skin, which is fascinating. You get these little
Speaker 2: patches of skin that can be darker or lighter than
Speaker 2: your underlying skin tone. And these patches are hyper keratotic,
Speaker 2: which means that they are these little hard patches kind
Speaker 2: of of like a wart almost like a little stuck
Speaker 2: on patch of skin. And this is caused by your
Speaker 2: skin actually proliferating in a very abnormal way. And these
Speaker 2: lesions are precursors to various skin cancers.
Speaker 1: Oh and so the skin cancer that's associated with arsenic
Speaker 1: is not just through direct contact on your skin, but
Speaker 1: could through any way that you are exposed.
Speaker 2: Right, it's not skin contact, It is ingestion or inhalation,
Speaker 2: but it goes and is absorbed through your whole body
Speaker 2: and causes these changes in your skin.
Speaker 1: And you wouldn't expect to see this with an acute case.
Speaker 2: Not as far as I could tell, because it takes
Speaker 2: time for your skin to react to it.
Speaker 1: Gotcha right.
Speaker 2: Long term ingestion can also cause cardiovascular disease. It can
Speaker 2: cause something that is called blackfoot disease. It's a very
Speaker 2: severe form of vascular disease in the feet where the
Speaker 2: vascular system becomes so severely compromised that you basically lose
Speaker 2: circulation to your feet and then develop ganggreen.
Speaker 1: Okay, it can.
Speaker 2: Cause heart attacks, it can cause strokes, can cause a
Speaker 2: lot of different things. So I wanted to try and
Speaker 2: get a little bit more into the nitty gritty of
Speaker 2: why it's causing specifically heart attacks, specifically vascular disease. So
Speaker 2: let me attempt. So I said that this is an
Speaker 2: element that can affect our enzymes and how our enzymes function.
Speaker 2: So a lot of what we know about the effects
Speaker 2: of arsenic in our body are what we think it's
Speaker 2: doing to various specific enzymes in the systems that we
Speaker 2: see effects. So, for example, cardiovascular damage, we know from
Speaker 2: epidemiological studies that arsenic can cause some pretty severe cardiovascular damage.
Speaker 2: It seems like the way it mostly does this is
Speaker 2: actually by increasing reactive oxygen species and inducing our cells
Speaker 2: to synthesize a bunch of inflammatory cytokines and a whole
Speaker 2: host of other largely reactive oxygen mediated enzymes and effects.
Speaker 2: And so the end result is that this arsenic is
Speaker 2: turning on a bunch of stuff that damages the lining
Speaker 2: of our blood vessels, that damages that endothelium, and so
Speaker 2: that's what ends up causing these cardiovascular complications like heart attack.
Speaker 2: It can cause increase blood pressure because that damage first
Speaker 2: of all, is going to damage our blood vessels, but
Speaker 2: then it also affects enzymes that cause vasoconstriction, so it
Speaker 2: causes our blood vessels to get smaller and smaller and smaller,
Speaker 2: which increases the pressure in our blood vessels.
Speaker 1: It can do anything it.
Speaker 2: Can, and then in our nervous system, because it's going
Speaker 2: to get there eventually. This is something that can cross
Speaker 2: our blood brain barrier. In our brain, again, we think
Speaker 2: it's related to oxidative stress, increased in reactive oxygen, but
Speaker 2: it can alter the metabolism of various neurotransmitters. So over
Speaker 2: long periods of time, exposure to arsenic can result in
Speaker 2: impaired memory or poor concentration. Arsenic also causes the cytoskeleton
Speaker 2: of our cells, like the literal kind of bones that
Speaker 2: form our cells. They're not bones, but it's called the cytoskeleton.
Speaker 2: It can cause that to be disrupted, to basically not
Speaker 2: be as strong or form in the correct way. And
Speaker 2: one of our types of cells that really rely on
Speaker 2: our cidoskeleton are our nerve axons. So arsenate causes the
Speaker 2: axons of our nerves to degrade, which leads to things
Speaker 2: like neuropathy, which we talked about a little bit already.
Speaker 2: This can look kind of like a geon Beret type neuropathy.
Speaker 1: Interesting, Okay.
Speaker 2: It can also arsenic lead to degradation of specific groups
Speaker 2: of neurons in our brains, like, for example, our dopamine
Speaker 2: producing neurons. So this can cause a syndrome that looks
Speaker 2: a lot like Parkinson's.
Speaker 1: Is it targeted in that way or are those just
Speaker 1: the types of neurons that are like somehow more susceptible.
Speaker 2: Right, exactly, Because it's not just those. It can also
Speaker 2: decrease activity of things other than dopamine, like acetylcholon estrise.
Speaker 2: It can cause an increase coal energic crisis. It can honestly, honestly,
Speaker 2: you said, it can go anywhere and do anything. That's
Speaker 2: accurate okay, it also affects our kidneys. Even though our
Speaker 2: kidneys are what is going to be excreting this arsenic. Eventually,
Speaker 2: as our kidneys are excreting this arsenic, they can also
Speaker 2: get hammered by the effects. And then that can have
Speaker 2: even more of an effect on our blood pressure because
Speaker 2: it's disrupting our kidney's ability to regulate our blood pressure, which,
Speaker 2: by the way, your kidneys do that for you. Finally,
Speaker 2: maybe not finally, because I'm gonna keep going. But another
Speaker 2: thing that I think is so fascinating is that exposure
Speaker 2: to arsenic at higher levels can also cause diabetes, like
Speaker 2: very specifically diabetes. I know your face, Yeah what huh? Okay,
Speaker 2: So this we have a more specific answer for. It
Speaker 2: turns out that arsenic decreases the expression of a transcription
Speaker 2: factor that results in us having increased resistance to insulin right,
Speaker 2: basically causing type two diabetes. And then on top of that,
Speaker 2: it slows down the metabolism of glucose because of its
Speaker 2: effects on ATP right, because of the way that it
Speaker 2: interacts with our metabolic cycles that produce ATP. It disrupts
Speaker 2: that process and so it interferes with ATP dependent insulin secretion,
Speaker 2: So now we're secreting less insulin and we're resistant to
Speaker 2: insulin boom diabetes. That is incredible, it's so overwhelming. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 2: I mentioned blackfoot disease. This is something that is a
Speaker 2: cardiovascular complication in a way because it's your vascular system
Speaker 2: just in your feet. And it's actually unclear if this
Speaker 2: is just arsenic or if this is something more. It
Speaker 2: has been seen in Taiwan very strongly in association with
Speaker 2: exposure to arsenic, but it hasn't been seen outside of
Speaker 2: Taiwan with exposure to arsenic, so there's a question is
Speaker 2: it in combination with malnutrition? Is it something else? And
Speaker 2: the reason I bring this up is because I think
Speaker 2: it highlights one of the big problems with trying to
Speaker 2: get at the exact effects of arsenic exposure. Not only
Speaker 2: is it going anywhere and everywhere and affecting over two
Speaker 2: one hundred different enzymes potentially in our bodies, but it's
Speaker 2: also something that we're being exposed to to various degrees
Speaker 2: in combination with so much else in the environment. So
Speaker 2: it's never going to be an individual only exposure arsenic alone.
Speaker 2: Just a couple more arsenic does cross the placenta the
Speaker 2: same way that it crosses the blood brain barrier, so
Speaker 2: it can have a lot of detrimental effects on the fetus.
Speaker 2: It can cause spontaneous abortion, still birth, preterm birth. There
Speaker 2: is some suggestion that exposure to arsenic in utero might
Speaker 2: be associated with increased cancer risk later in life, but
Speaker 2: that's a little unclear. But we do know that arsenic
Speaker 2: is a carcinogen. And what I think is so interesting
Speaker 2: about arsenic as a carcinogen arsenic as something that causes cancer,
Speaker 2: is that we do not know the cellular mechanisms of this,
Speaker 2: but this is one of the strongest associations, especially when
Speaker 2: it comes to skin cancer as well as bladder cancer,
Speaker 2: lung cancer, various other cancers.
Speaker 1: So we don't know the exact mechanism of like that
Speaker 1: abnormal skin growth or cellular growth you know on your skin,
Speaker 1: or is it just like inflammation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's a good question. It seems like arsenic activates
Speaker 2: various transcription factors and induces like changes the expression of
Speaker 2: genes that are involved in cell growth and proliferation or transformation,
Speaker 2: and so that is then leading you to cancer. Why
Speaker 2: does it do this in the skin, So specifically, we
Speaker 2: don't know how is it doing it in the skin,
Speaker 2: So specifically we don't know. And the same is true
Speaker 2: for other cancers like lung cancer and bladder cancer that
Speaker 2: have been associated with arsenic.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, I know interesting.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that was like way too much
Speaker 2: or not enough, but it feels like a lot.
Speaker 1: I mean it's a lot, But I think that that's
Speaker 1: just also the nature of arsenic Like, yeah, it's it
Speaker 1: is has profound effects throughout your body. And how much
Speaker 1: variation is there in terms of susceptibility like children versus
Speaker 1: adults or yeah, anything else like that?
Speaker 2: Great question. Children generally are more susceptible to things like
Speaker 2: toxins than adults because lower amounts are going to cause
Speaker 2: an effect on children because they're smaller, because their metabolism
Speaker 2: is such that that's going to be the effect. But
Speaker 2: other than that, I don't have a lot of very
Speaker 2: specifics in terms of like who is exposed the most
Speaker 2: or anything like that. Okay, so that's that's arsenic arin
Speaker 2: was that that was a lot?
Speaker 1: How do you treat arsenic poisoning?
Speaker 3: Oh?
Speaker 2: Such a good question. It's not super easy to do.
Speaker 2: There are a variety of different compounds that you can
Speaker 2: use for what's called kulation therapy, especially if someone is
Speaker 2: exposed to very large amounts of arsenic. And what culation
Speaker 2: therapy does is basically bind the arsenic and then allow
Speaker 2: your body to excrete it without having to metabolize it,
Speaker 2: et cetera. So basically just helping your body get rid
Speaker 2: of it quicker. But otherwise you just wait it out
Speaker 2: and try to not be further exposed and then treat
Speaker 2: whatever complications have arisen.
Speaker 1: I thought. I also read something about folate, which I
Speaker 1: thought was fascinating because we just researched folate and how
Speaker 1: higher levels of folate are recommended for long term, more
Speaker 1: chronic exposure to arsenic. But I don't know why.
Speaker 2: I wonder, I mean, I don't either, But most likely
Speaker 2: it has to do with the fact that we talked
Speaker 2: about how important folate is as a cofactor in all
Speaker 2: of these various metabolic processes. So it's probably just trying
Speaker 2: to displace arsenic in a way, not directly, but allowing
Speaker 2: ourselves to continue their metabolic processes despite.
Speaker 3: The exposure to arsenic.
Speaker 2: That makes sense, right, Oh, that's interesting though, I know. Connections, Yeah,
Speaker 2: they're all around us. So Aaron, speaking of connections, how
Speaker 2: did people connect the dots? Like, how did they figure
Speaker 2: out what arsenic was and then figure out that it's
Speaker 2: such a great killer of people.
Speaker 1: I will try to answer those right after this break.
Speaker 1: Like we talked about earlier, Arsenic is often called the
Speaker 1: king of poisons and the poison of kings. It is
Speaker 1: perhaps the most infamous and famous of all poisons and
Speaker 1: the one most synonymous with murder. And it could be
Speaker 1: said that the history of all intentional poisonings is really
Speaker 1: the history of Arsenic. What uh huh? Why it was so? Well,
Speaker 1: we'll get to it. We'll get to it, and you'll
Speaker 1: see that it does make sense as an intentional as
Speaker 1: an intentional agent of poison, and as I'll also talk
Speaker 1: about later on, Arsenic does deserve this notoriety. But like
Speaker 1: with all poisons that we've covered on the podcast, there
Speaker 1: is so much more to this chemical than just its
Speaker 1: role as a plot device in an Agatha Christie novel,
Speaker 1: or it's used by the Borgias to a mass wealth
Speaker 1: and power in fifteenth century Italy. Alongside Arsenic's potential for
Speaker 1: murder is also, of course, it's potential for healing. It
Speaker 1: has been considered an important medical substance for years, though
Speaker 1: whether it was more harmful than helpful is in question
Speaker 1: for much of that time, and it's still in use
Speaker 1: today as a treatment for some cancers, which is pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: But the other enormously important side of arsenic is what
Speaker 1: happens when you come into contact with arsenic unintentionally, whether
Speaker 1: through occupational exposure, environmental exposure, or through drinking water that
Speaker 1: is expected to be safe and clean. And these three
Speaker 1: main faces of arsenic as an intentional poison, as a
Speaker 1: historically questionable but present day effective medicine, and as an
Speaker 1: environmental contaminant are the three themes that kind of make
Speaker 1: up this history section. And initially I was going to
Speaker 1: split up the discussion along those lines. First I talk
Speaker 1: about arsenic and murder, and then I talk about arsenic
Speaker 1: and medicine and so on. As I read more, I
Speaker 1: realize just how intertwined these roles of arsenic all are.
Speaker 1: For instance, the rise of arsenic as a murder weapon
Speaker 1: in the eighteen hundreds in Britain and its inclusion among
Speaker 1: many patent medicines came about because it was more available
Speaker 1: from mining, which of course led to more occupational exposure
Speaker 1: as well as environmental exposure when it was used as
Speaker 1: for instance, a dye a coloran. So let's get started
Speaker 1: on this rich history of arsenic.
Speaker 2: Oh, I can't wait.
Speaker 1: Like you said, aaron, arsenic occurs naturally all over the world,
Speaker 1: with apparently a good deal of it coming from volcanoes.
Speaker 1: Like in its natural form, Yeah, and typically you won't
Speaker 1: find arsenic in its elemental form in nature, it exists
Speaker 1: in over one hundred and fifty different minerals and is
Speaker 1: usually found as a sulfide compound, commonly railgar or orpiment.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if I'm saying those right. Probably not.
Speaker 1: And although arsenic is widely distributed, like we mentioned, it's
Speaker 1: not necessarily evenly distributed. And mining has played a big
Speaker 1: role in both the uneven distribution of arsenic in the
Speaker 1: environment as well as the high concentrations that we see
Speaker 1: in the soil, the water, in the air of some regions.
Speaker 1: But even before mining and industry unloaded tons of arsenic everywhere,
Speaker 1: some humans lived in naturally arsenic rich environments and their
Speaker 1: constant exposure may have left a genomic signature. So you
Speaker 1: talked about how we have a gene that is like
Speaker 1: a methyl transferrase, right, it adds methyls to whatever. And
Speaker 1: this gene is really important in metabolizing arsenic so that
Speaker 1: we can excrete it safely. There is some very cool
Speaker 1: research looking at this gene, which is called as three
Speaker 1: MT if you're curious, it's the arsenic plus three oxidation
Speaker 1: state methyl transferrase gene. And this research has found that
Speaker 1: in some populations that have historically lived in areas with
Speaker 1: high arsenic concentration in drinking water, particularly in some parts
Speaker 1: of the Andes in South America, it seems that you're
Speaker 1: more likely to see a protective version of this gene,
Speaker 1: one that helps with more efficient arsenic metabolism, so you
Speaker 1: can be exposed to higher levels of arsenic without getting
Speaker 1: as sick as you would without that version.
Speaker 2: Fascinating, so cool, and.
Speaker 1: I think that this is one of the earliest or
Speaker 1: one of the only known examples of humans adapting to toxins. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think it's so cool.
Speaker 2: How interesting.
Speaker 1: Also, there is evidence of high arsenic exposure that's been
Speaker 1: found in remains of people who lived in the Atacama
Speaker 1: Desert in Chile around seven thousand years ago. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean humans have been exposed to arsenic for a
Speaker 1: very long time, even before mining, which isn't to say
Speaker 1: that mining hasn't played possibly the largest role in exposure
Speaker 1: nowadays and historically. But when did humans start noticing the
Speaker 1: negative health effects of arsenic? Probably as soon as we
Speaker 1: started working with the stuff, which was around the Bronze Age,
Speaker 1: which began thirty three hundred BCE. The Bronze Age is
Speaker 1: called this because it's when people began to create Guess
Speaker 1: what bronze?
Speaker 2: Yeah, and what's bronze?
Speaker 1: Bronze? Bronze is an alloy consisting mostly of copper, along
Speaker 1: with tin and sometimes other non metals or metaloids. Okay,
Speaker 1: most metals aren't just hanging out there in their pure form.
Speaker 1: They often co occur with other things like personic and
Speaker 1: an observant smelter would have noticed that what you find
Speaker 1: with your copper naturally could influence the quality of the
Speaker 1: alloy that you produced, how strong it was, how durable
Speaker 1: it was, et cetera. And arsenic and copper happened to
Speaker 1: be a great combo, which is something that you would
Speaker 1: be like, I'm storing that little fact away for later,
Speaker 1: because I'm gonna have better bronze than the other person. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and this observant smelter would have also probably noticed that
Speaker 1: when they did their smelting with this combo, the oven
Speaker 1: was full of noxious fumes, and the more they worked
Speaker 1: with it, the worse they felt.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because the fumes are pretty bad.
Speaker 1: Pretty bad. They also may have noticed that smelters tended
Speaker 1: to not live quite as long as their non smelting buddies.
Speaker 1: One paper I read suggested that arsenic poisoning in metal
Speaker 1: workers represents the very first occupational exposure.
Speaker 2: Huh wow, bold claim.
Speaker 1: It is a bold claim, But I mean, if you
Speaker 1: were smelting and you would come into contact with arsenic
Speaker 1: almost immediately, I mean, I'm sure we could make arguments
Speaker 1: for other occupational exposures. There are many different occupational In
Speaker 1: any case, people have been exposed to arsenic in an
Speaker 1: occupational setting for a long time. The Greek god of smiths, Hephaestus,
Speaker 1: and his Roman counterpart Vulcan, are often depicted as limping
Speaker 1: and kind of hunched over, and there's been this long
Speaker 1: debate over what might be the cause of that limp.
Speaker 1: Some people have speculated it's because smiths were known to
Speaker 1: suffer the ill effects of working with toxic metals such
Speaker 1: as lead and arsenic, and so he was depicted with
Speaker 1: a limp and recognition of.
Speaker 2: That I love that air, whether or not.
Speaker 1: Have faced this limp was supposed to represent arsenic poisoning.
Speaker 1: Humans have been aware of arsenic in its various forms
Speaker 1: for centuries. Take the etymology of the word, for instance,
Speaker 1: which starts somewhere around the Persian word zarnik, which means
Speaker 1: yellow orpiment, which is this brightly colored compound of arsenic
Speaker 1: and sulfur. Zarnik was then translated into the Greek word arsenecon,
Speaker 1: which was related to another Greek word arsenicos, meaning masculine
Speaker 1: or potent, and eventually that became arsenic. So like, that
Speaker 1: is a kind of and that's only a little bit
Speaker 1: of a snippet of the etymology. So I think that
Speaker 1: kind of is a good indication that not only was
Speaker 1: arsenic widely known in many parts of the ancient world,
Speaker 1: it was also known in the ancient world for a
Speaker 1: very long time. Arsenic in its many forms, was used
Speaker 1: in the ancient world not just to make copper alloys,
Speaker 1: but also as a hair remover for leather working, or
Speaker 1: to create a silvery surface on mirrors and statues, as
Speaker 1: a dye or cosmetic, or as a medication for all
Speaker 1: sorts of things lice infestation, abscesses, constipation, tuberculosis, ulcer's cough,
Speaker 1: shortness of breath.
Speaker 3: And so on.
Speaker 2: Does it all?
Speaker 1: Does it all? The first exposures to arsenic may have
Speaker 1: been of an occupational but the growing range of uses
Speaker 1: for arsenic meant that anyone was at risk, and some
Speaker 1: scholars think that arsenic poisoning in the ancient world was
Speaker 1: incredibly unbelievably widespread, not necessarily poisoning in the murderous sense. However,
Speaker 1: the most common forms of arsenic that people worked with,
Speaker 1: this real gar and orpiment, which I have mentioned before,
Speaker 1: are insoluble and brightly colored. There are two qualities that
Speaker 1: would make them pretty poor murder tools, at least if
Speaker 1: you wanted to get away with it.
Speaker 2: Okay, aarin.
Speaker 1: Arsenic trioxide, or white arsenic or rat spain. On the
Speaker 1: other hand, those are all names for the same thing.
Speaker 1: Is a powder that dissolves in water, is colorless and tasteless.
Speaker 1: Aarin Does it get better than that? Yeah?
Speaker 2: No, not when you're trying to murder somebody.
Speaker 3: M h.
Speaker 1: This this form of arsenic, this arsenic trioxide or white
Speaker 1: arsenic was known to the ancient world, as were the
Speaker 1: means of producing it, but it didn't seem to be
Speaker 1: the top pick for intentional poisonings in ancient Greece or Rome.
Speaker 1: That honor would go to Wolf, Spain and Hemlock. It
Speaker 1: was probably used here and there, such as by Agrippina
Speaker 1: the Younger and her son Nero to get him to
Speaker 1: the coveted position of Emperor of Rome, but it really
Speaker 1: only began to gain notoriety in the fourteen hundreds and
Speaker 1: fifteen hundreds thanks to the Borges, who were the Borges.
Speaker 1: Someone might ask.
Speaker 2: I remember learning about the Borges.
Speaker 1: In what class history?
Speaker 2: No? I remember, and I'm pretty sure it was eighth
Speaker 2: grade European history. Does that sound right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I feel like that would be right.
Speaker 1: I mean, the Borges are a very dramatic and titillating
Speaker 1: part of history. So this was this family who super wealthy,
Speaker 1: super powerful, and whose name became synonymous with greed, adultery, theft,
Speaker 1: and murder, specifically murder via arsenic.
Speaker 2: Ooh, I love it.
Speaker 1: The Borges were said to collect and store poisons like wine,
Speaker 1: having like a poison cellar instead of a wine cellar.
Speaker 1: They would experiment with different combinations until they found one
Speaker 1: that they liked. My gosh, their signature poison La Cantarella
Speaker 1: was mostly arsenic, and they especially the siblings Cesaire and
Speaker 1: Lucrezia Borgia, whose father, by the way, was Pope Alexander
Speaker 1: the sixth, like the Pope Wait what the Pope? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Had kim okay, And these siblings supposedly fed it to
Speaker 1: anyone who stood in their way, And it seems like
Speaker 1: there were a lot of people who stood in their.
Speaker 2: Way, Okay.
Speaker 1: But I do want to add that many historians now
Speaker 1: think that a lot of these rumors about the Borges
Speaker 1: were exaggerated by contemporary critics, and Lucrezia may have been
Speaker 1: more of a victim of her family rather than the
Speaker 1: infamous poisoner that she was painted to be. But regardless
Speaker 1: of where the truth lies, the Borges were definitely responsible
Speaker 1: for putting arsenic on the map as a murder weapon,
Speaker 1: but they were merely just the first. After the Borges,
Speaker 1: Arsenic pops up more and more in stories like the
Speaker 1: one of Julia Tofana from Naples in the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: who sold her signature arsenic poison Aqua Tofana to dozens
Speaker 1: of people. Or Hrona Maspara, who also sold poison and
Speaker 1: started a poisoning society in Rome in the mid sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: where she taught women how to poison their husbands. Oh
Speaker 1: my gosh, allegedly, and of course I have to mention
Speaker 1: Catherine de Medici, Queen Consort of France in the sixteenth century,
Speaker 1: who is said to have studied poisons extensively, including Arsenic,
Speaker 1: and brought the art of poisoning, especially for political gain,
Speaker 1: from Italy to France. And already a pattern emerges with
Speaker 1: these stories of famous Arsenic poisoners. They were all women. Granted,
Speaker 1: they were also mostly all from Italy, which did have
Speaker 1: a reputation for a while as a place with a
Speaker 1: lot of poisoners, in part maybe because there was for
Speaker 1: a period of time an entire branch of the Venetian
Speaker 1: government apparently dedicated to poisonings, and you could get a
Speaker 1: job as a professional poisoner.
Speaker 2: Wait wait, wait wait, not like to investigating poisonings or
Speaker 2: like something like that, was just like to point to poison,
Speaker 2: to poison people. Yeah, how fascinating. I just love learning
Speaker 2: this history that I once probably heard some of.
Speaker 1: There's just so much to arsenic. There's so much, and
Speaker 1: it's like, this is such a brief tour, even though
Speaker 1: this is a long section, this is such a surface
Speaker 1: level tour.
Speaker 2: I love it.
Speaker 1: And of course neither of these stereotypes were true. But right, like,
Speaker 1: it's not like people were only poisoning in Italy, right people,
Speaker 1: And of course women weren't the only ones poisoning. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that didn't stop them from being perpetuated.
Speaker 2: I feel like that's still like a in movies and things.
Speaker 2: That's still like the trope, like poison is like on
Speaker 2: CSI or bond order, Like you still hear that as
Speaker 2: like a trope.
Speaker 1: Yep, yep. And there was a study of murders in
Speaker 1: Victorian England, which by the way, had fully embraced arsenic
Speaker 1: as a murder weapon by the late seventeen hundreds, and
Speaker 1: this study showed that cases of poisonings were actually fairly
Speaker 1: evenly split across genders, but that poisonings represented a smaller
Speaker 1: proportion of murder styles for men, who were much more
Speaker 1: likely to use violent means of murder and to and
Speaker 1: were more likely to murder overall. So if that makes sense,
Speaker 1: So when women did murder even though they took up
Speaker 1: a smaller proportion of all murders, they were more likely
Speaker 1: to use poison in their breakdown, according to the study. Interesting,
Speaker 1: and when anyone used poison, they grew more and more
Speaker 1: likely to reach for the bottle of arsenic. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about why, and to do that, let's head to the
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. The nineteenth century has been called the arsenic century,
Speaker 1: but not because everyone in their neighbor was poisoning everyone
Speaker 1: else in their neighbor with arsenic, or rather not just
Speaker 1: because that intentional poisoning via arsenic was a really popular
Speaker 1: choice during this time, in part because the symptoms of
Speaker 1: arsenic poisoning could mimic several infectious diseases that were super
Speaker 1: common around this time, or even just other diseases. Yes, okay,
Speaker 1: I love likes Yeah, like cholera. Right, so you talked
Speaker 1: about how it's like these GI symptoms are like cholera.
Speaker 1: That's pretty handy if you're trying to murder someone during
Speaker 1: a cholera outbreak, sure is. Yeah, But also not just
Speaker 1: because of this mimicry, but because arsenic was really easily accessible.
Speaker 1: You could just buy it at the local grocers. The
Speaker 1: pharmacy anywhere. But the vast majority of people who became
Speaker 1: exposed to arsenic during the eighteen hundreds, and a whole
Speaker 1: lot of people got exposed did so because of their
Speaker 1: job or simply because they were eating, breathing, and living
Speaker 1: among the poisonous stuff. During the Industrial Revolution, which started
Speaker 1: in Great Britain and the US around the seventeen sixties
Speaker 1: or so and lasted until the eighteen twenties eighteen forties,
Speaker 1: the demand for metals grew and grew in order to
Speaker 1: build these new buildings or build these new machines, and
Speaker 1: of course to get new metals you have to mine.
Speaker 1: At first, it seems like arsenic specifically, this super toxic
Speaker 1: white arsenic arsenic trioxide was mainly a byproduct during the
Speaker 1: smelting of other metals. People had, of course, recognized its
Speaker 1: value on its own for a long time, but it
Speaker 1: wasn't until the eighteen hundreds that mining for arsenic specifically
Speaker 1: really took off. The list of things that you could
Speaker 1: use arsenic four seemed endless, and the arsenic industry in
Speaker 1: minds to produce this stuff grew and grew. For instance,
Speaker 1: it began to be used as a bright green colorant.
Speaker 1: It went by the names Paris Green or Shiel's Green.
Speaker 1: Wallpapers were full of the stuff.
Speaker 2: Question.
Speaker 1: Uh huh.
Speaker 2: You know the book Goodnight Moon. Yeah, the walls are green.
Speaker 2: Uh huh is that Paris green?
Speaker 1: When was Goodnight Moon written?
Speaker 2: Ah? I don't know. It's been around since my mom
Speaker 2: was little, so before the late nineteen fifties.
Speaker 1: I feel like it was. It's been around since the
Speaker 1: nineteen Yeah, I feel like no, it would Okay, it's
Speaker 1: unlikely to have been at that point Paris green unless
Speaker 1: they were living in a house that hadn't been updated
Speaker 1: since the mid eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 3: How fast eighteen hundreds?
Speaker 2: Yeah, okay, I'm gonna have to google this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you should definitely google wallpapers that have Paris green
Speaker 1: in them, okay, because some of them are really beautiful.
Speaker 1: But it wasn't just wallpapers either. This arsenic green was
Speaker 1: used in artificial flowers, which were often in decorations for
Speaker 1: hats or dresses, and the gowns themselves were often dyed
Speaker 1: with arsenic colorant. Oh no, so you can imagine someone
Speaker 1: in an arsenic dress dancing and swirling around, not knowing
Speaker 1: that arsenic was being discharged with every move and you're
Speaker 1: breathing it in, you're shedding it on the floor, absorbing
Speaker 1: it maybe into your skin, maybe not. Yeah, there's a
Speaker 1: comic from eighteen sixty two about this that's titled the
Speaker 1: Arsenic Waltz. And speaking of like just discharging arsenic everywhere,
Speaker 1: let's talk about the wallpapers. Even though wallpaper producers tried
Speaker 1: to downplay any risk that their arsenic wallpapers posed, such
Speaker 1: as the famous designer William Morris, who, by the way,
Speaker 1: was a big investor in the Devon Great Consul's Arsenic Mind,
Speaker 1: which was the biggest source of arsenic in the world.
Speaker 1: So this is like the head honcho. Most beautiful wallpaper
Speaker 1: designs you've ever seen there you can still get, actually,
Speaker 1: William Morris designs and all kinds of things. He was
Speaker 1: all about the arsenic huh. And even though there was
Speaker 1: all this downplaying of the risks, reports just kept pouring
Speaker 1: in of people that would become really sick after wallpapering
Speaker 1: their room and the only time they would get better
Speaker 1: was moving out of the room or taking down the wallpaper.
Speaker 1: And children, of course seem to be especially at risk,
Speaker 1: crawling around on floors that were coated with a dusting
Speaker 1: of arsenic from the green wallpaper.
Speaker 2: And just licking everything.
Speaker 1: Licking everything, Yeah, putting yep yep, And this is actually
Speaker 1: still arsenic wallpapers is still a problem of course in
Speaker 1: places that are being renovated or like going back through
Speaker 1: just like we talked about with anthrax. I think because
Speaker 1: they used to use anyway, I can't remember what it
Speaker 1: was or what could be both probably both. Arsenic could
Speaker 1: also appear in candles, soap books, glass and glassware, paint,
Speaker 1: stuffed animals, paper and packaging, fly papers, lamp shades. I mean,
Speaker 1: the list goes on and on and on, and so
Speaker 1: it's pretty easy to see how you could be exposed
Speaker 1: on a daily basis.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but let.
Speaker 1: Me read you this quote about arsenic during the Victorian
Speaker 1: era to fit out the picture. So this is from
Speaker 1: the medical historian James Wharton quote. A great deal of
Speaker 1: it was introduced purposely into many of the components of
Speaker 1: everyday life, with the result that people took it in
Speaker 1: with fruits and vegetables, swallowed it with wine, inhaled it
Speaker 1: from cigarettes, absorbed it from cosmetics, and imbibed it even
Speaker 1: from the pine glass. The substance was present in a
Speaker 1: broad assortment of household items, from candies and candles to cookware,
Speaker 1: concert tickets, and preserved partridge heads used to ornament ladies, headdresses,
Speaker 1: Christmas tree ornaments, and children's stuffed animals. No less were
Speaker 1: often arsenical, and the money used to purchase all of
Speaker 1: these products was itself sometimes contaminated.
Speaker 2: How fascinating aaron I it is.
Speaker 1: I had no idea how the extent to which arsenic
Speaker 1: was in every day items.
Speaker 2: I've never have guessed, never have guessed that.
Speaker 1: I know, I know, and I don't know if you
Speaker 1: if the word candy popped out to you and that quote,
Speaker 1: because it did to me, because what on.
Speaker 2: Earth I love candy?
Speaker 1: Uh huh, Well, the candy thing refers to the use
Speaker 1: of arsenic as a dye to make candies green.
Speaker 2: So I just googled Paris green real quick. It's a
Speaker 2: gorgeous color.
Speaker 1: Oh, it really is.
Speaker 2: It's like such a green green green. Yeah, so I
Speaker 2: get it. I mean, I'm not advocating for it, but like,
Speaker 2: I get how once you found something that like makes
Speaker 2: that color like, it's gonna be a high bar to
Speaker 2: stop using it because it's going to.
Speaker 1: Make you a lot of money, right, exactly, And that's
Speaker 1: what that's the thing is that there were so many
Speaker 1: mines now devoted to arsenic, and so it was just like,
Speaker 1: let's find what else we can use this for. But yeah,
Speaker 1: the arsenic in candies was shocking and intentionally But there
Speaker 1: was also a pretty infamous incident in eighteen fifty eight
Speaker 1: when an English sweet maker named Joseph Neil accidentally arsenic
Speaker 1: poisoned about two hundred people and twenty of them died.
Speaker 1: So what happened was that it was really common practice
Speaker 1: at the time to fill out candies with like tasteless,
Speaker 1: inert substances what to kind of yeah, to be like
Speaker 1: I'm going to add a little bit of sugar, you know,
Speaker 1: just to kind of fill it out a little bit
Speaker 1: more save money. And one of these substances was called daft,
Speaker 1: which seems like it was probably mostly plaster of Paris.
Speaker 1: And this sweet maker mistook white, which sounds gross enough
Speaker 1: on its own, but the sweetmaker mistook white arsenic for
Speaker 1: this daft stuff and poisoned a massive batch of his candies.
Speaker 1: Oh no, yeah, so it was just with white arsenic.
Speaker 2: Oh goodness, gracious.
Speaker 1: But even if you avoided these tainted candies or adding
Speaker 1: these other things. How could you have lived in the
Speaker 1: late seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds and not been exposed
Speaker 1: to arsenic like high levels of arsenic. Yeah, in the
Speaker 1: nineteen fifties, some hair samples of Napoleon, who died in
Speaker 1: eighteen twenty one of stomach cancer. Supposedly, this is like
Speaker 1: the fourth time Napoleon has been mentioned this season.
Speaker 2: I know. I was just going to say, like, can
Speaker 2: we put a compilation together of every time that you
Speaker 2: mentioned Napoleon?
Speaker 1: I would love that. But Napoleon's hair was tested in
Speaker 1: the nineteen fifties and found to contain high amounts of arsenic,
Speaker 1: which led some people to conclude that he died of
Speaker 1: intentional arsenic poisoning.
Speaker 2: What what I feel like another episode you said he
Speaker 2: died from a different thing that.
Speaker 1: We I'm sure probably because the other thing, too is
Speaker 1: that it's like, that's a great, that's very fun and
Speaker 1: interesting hypothesis, and it could be true. But I think
Speaker 1: there's some debate over whether it was intentional and whether
Speaker 1: there were high enough levels to actually cause him severe
Speaker 1: illness and especially death, because there was definitely arsenic in
Speaker 1: the wallpaper on his living room walls, and also was
Speaker 1: probably arsenic in everything, just everything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and he's candy. I'm sure Napoleon ate candy. I
Speaker 2: feel like he had to have had to have a
Speaker 2: sweet tooth.
Speaker 1: But even if Napoleon wasn't around enough arsenic for it
Speaker 1: to kill him or make him seriously ill, plenty of
Speaker 1: other people were, especially those working directly with a substance.
Speaker 1: Let's start right at the source arsenic minds. Yeah, every
Speaker 1: step along the way, from the dust inside the mines
Speaker 1: to the toxic gases produced in the smelting process to
Speaker 1: the packaging of the arsenic for future sale, workers were
Speaker 1: exposed to outrageous amounts of arsenic and many mind employees
Speaker 1: became too sick to work, which led to an increase
Speaker 1: in applications to the government under the poor laws, which
Speaker 1: made the government wonder whether there might be something about
Speaker 1: these minds making people sick. So they began an investigation
Speaker 1: into the health effects of arsenic minds, and surprise, surprise,
Speaker 1: they found that there was no ventilation or protection and
Speaker 1: that continuous exposure was really dangerous, especially also in terms
Speaker 1: of lung cancer. Yes, they found.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because in a mine, you're being exposed to it
Speaker 2: primarily via inhalation rather than ingestion, and so it's going
Speaker 2: straight to your lungs and causing damage there, hence the
Speaker 2: lung cancer.
Speaker 1: Totally. Despite this, nothing was really done about it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm not surprised based on this podcast.
Speaker 1: And this is a common theme in the history of
Speaker 1: arsenic that we'll see repeated time and time again flag wallpaper.
Speaker 1: By the eighteen fifties, people had grown suspicious of arsenic
Speaker 1: laced wallpaper and demanded investigations into just how much of
Speaker 1: a risk it actually posed, starting with the wallpaper factories. Unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: these investigations turned up tons of health problems in these
Speaker 1: crowded and poorly ventilated factories where this wallpaper was produced.
Speaker 1: Factories which I might add were mostly staffed by children.
Speaker 1: Oh no, The majority of the workers that would actually
Speaker 1: paint the wallpaper were children, and over half of these
Speaker 1: children were under the age of thirteen.
Speaker 3: Oh no.
Speaker 1: But even though these investigations confirmed what many people had
Speaker 1: already suspected, no changes were really made to the manufacturing
Speaker 1: process to try to reduce exposure. If someone did get
Speaker 1: sick from arsenic exposure in one of these factories, it
Speaker 1: was usually blamed on the worker, Oh you didn't clean
Speaker 1: your hands well enough, or oh, you shouldn't have licked
Speaker 1: your paintbrush, which was reminiscent of the Radium girls. Right.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: And of course, wallpaper production was just one of many
Speaker 1: industries where arsenic was commonly used. Another one was the
Speaker 1: artificial flower trade. This was actually a booming industry in
Speaker 1: the nineteenth century where workers who were primarily young, economically
Speaker 1: disadvantaged women, would spend all day in crowded rooms decorating
Speaker 1: hats and dresses with these artificial flowers and leaves and fruits,
Speaker 1: many of which had been dyed this beautiful green, this
Speaker 1: beautiful Paris green, or Shields green. With these green arsenic diyes.
Speaker 1: The business owners weren't required to tell their employees that
Speaker 1: they were working with a potentially deadly substance, or give
Speaker 1: any safety guidelines on how to handle it, or if
Speaker 1: those requirements did exist, because eventually they did in some places,
Speaker 1: they weren't really enforced. The attitude at the time was, well,
Speaker 1: if you didn't want to work with arsenic laced flowers,
Speaker 1: then find another job.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, gracious.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's classic, completely ignoring that many workers didn't have
Speaker 1: this luxury of choice. Besides proving useful and decorating hats
Speaker 1: and walls with its vivid green color, arsenic was also
Speaker 1: found to be a stellar pesticide, and naturally it was
Speaker 1: used everywhere tobacco for a long time, absolutely chalk full
Speaker 1: of arsenic.
Speaker 2: Yeap, I read that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, grains used in beer. An outbreak of arsenic
Speaker 1: poisoning in England from tainted beer finally prompted them to
Speaker 1: put a limit on how much arsenic you could spread,
Speaker 1: but the US, which was a much bigger user of arsenic,
Speaker 1: lagged far behind, not surprising at least until a British
Speaker 1: family got arsenic poisoning from apples that had been imported
Speaker 1: from the US, and so they finally agreed to lower
Speaker 1: arsenic spraying levels, but only on apples that were to
Speaker 1: be exported.
Speaker 2: Oh cool like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's awesome. Yeah, And I'm curious. I'm very curious
Speaker 1: to hear we stand in terms of arsenic use in
Speaker 1: agriculture today, because I know that so much land is
Speaker 1: contaminated with arsenic, either in soil or groundwater because of
Speaker 1: how much it was used as a pesticide in the past,
Speaker 1: and not just to spray crops, but also to protect
Speaker 1: sheep from pests, which probably harmed the sheep as much
Speaker 1: as it did the worker who had to hold this
Speaker 1: wriggling animal in this arsenic solution and press it into
Speaker 1: the wool of the sheep with their bare arms for
Speaker 1: hours and hours every single day, and many of these
Speaker 1: people eventually developed skin cancer from this constant exposure to arsenic.
Speaker 1: Of course, arsenic was used extensively in taxidermy in the
Speaker 1: nineteenth century. The arsenic based soap that somebody came up
Speaker 1: with was the soap was the first one to actually
Speaker 1: that actually seemed to work and not just leave you
Speaker 1: with a rotting carcass.
Speaker 2: Like it used to clean the in the animal once
Speaker 2: you skinned it or something.
Speaker 1: That's that's what it seems like.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like thet I have literally never thought about what
Speaker 2: it takes to taxidermy preserve an animal.
Speaker 1: But that could be a fun episode, it could.
Speaker 2: Be And that kind of makes sense that they would
Speaker 2: use something gnarly mm hmm.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does. And during the nineteenth century was this
Speaker 1: huge time for natural history and taxidermy, as people traveled
Speaker 1: to new places and brought back animals specimens to fill museums.
Speaker 1: You have collections, collections, collections, and its legacy lasts today.
Speaker 1: For people who work on these historical collections in museums,
Speaker 1: they have to take special precautions to make sure that
Speaker 1: they're not being continually exposed to these arsenics and specimens.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Yeah. And the success of arsenic and taxidermy led to
Speaker 1: it being used also in embalming starting in the early
Speaker 1: nineteenth century, but it didn't last too long as an
Speaker 1: embalming agent for two reasons. One was that people were
Speaker 1: worried about the negative health impacts of working so closely
Speaker 1: with the substance. Side note. John Snow of Broad Street
Speaker 1: Pump and Cholera epidemic fame published a letter in a
Speaker 1: British medical journal in which he described the dangers of
Speaker 1: working with cadavers because of their toxic arsenic embalming contents.
Speaker 2: Huh yeah.
Speaker 1: But the other reason that arsen and embalming was short
Speaker 1: lived was that if you used arsenic to preserve a body,
Speaker 1: how would you be able to tell whether that person
Speaker 1: had been murdered? Using arsenic you couldn't. And this was
Speaker 1: a problem because people were certainly still committing murder with
Speaker 1: the stuff. How interesting, As I mentioned white, arsenic tasteless,
Speaker 1: colorless dissolves and water can be given over time to
Speaker 1: mimic a chronic illness, and importantly during a good chunk
Speaker 1: of the seventeen hundreds and eighteen hundreds was super easy
Speaker 1: to obtain. In England. Until eighteen fifty one, there were
Speaker 1: no legal restrictions on the sale of poisons, so you
Speaker 1: could pop down to the corner store for some arsenic
Speaker 1: based rat poison, or head over to the pharmacists and
Speaker 1: pick up Fowler's Solution, which was a medication whose featured
Speaker 1: ingredient was arsenic, and it was also used like well
Speaker 1: into the twentieth century. It was bad, yeah, so of
Speaker 1: course people used arsenic for murder. One of Arsenic's nicknames
Speaker 1: was inheritance powder. Oh my gosh. There are many stories
Speaker 1: that I like to explain why it would be called that,
Speaker 1: but I'll just briefly mention one, which is that one
Speaker 1: of the signers of the US Declaration of Independence, George Wythe,
Speaker 1: was likely poisoned along with two of his employees by
Speaker 1: his grandson because he had threatened to cut him out
Speaker 1: of his will.
Speaker 2: Oh my yeah, juicy family dramas, and as much as
Speaker 2: I'd like to go through a long list of all
Speaker 2: of the famous arsenic murder cases, I'm only going to mention.
Speaker 1: A few that played a role in the development of
Speaker 1: a test for arsenic However, if you are interested in
Speaker 1: reading more about these other infamous cases, such as a
Speaker 1: town in Hungary where dozens of arsenic murders happened over
Speaker 1: the course of decades like dozens and dozens, or the
Speaker 1: two two thousand and three mass poisoning of churchgoers in Maine,
Speaker 1: then I will recommend the book King of Poisons by
Speaker 1: John Pariscandala. Another attractive feature of arsenic as a poison
Speaker 1: for much of its history was that you couldn't test
Speaker 1: for it. You couldn't say your honor, this was clearly
Speaker 1: a case of arsenic poisoning and not cholera, as the
Speaker 1: defendant claims, or whatever you would say. Of course, people
Speaker 1: still got convicted based on witness testimony or a confession
Speaker 1: or a coerced confession, but the scientific proof of arsenic
Speaker 1: poisoning would have to wait until the eighteen hundreds. There's
Speaker 1: an asterisk that I have here because there is one
Speaker 1: case in England in the seventeen fifties where a chemist
Speaker 1: claimed to successfully test for arsenic, but it's not clear
Speaker 1: what whether he actually did it and if it did anything.
Speaker 1: And the accused of woman who allegedly poisoned her father
Speaker 1: for preventing her elopement to an already married dude was
Speaker 1: convicted despite of this non specific and probably useless test
Speaker 1: and she was hanged.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: Anyway, The first actual test for arsenic in cases of
Speaker 1: poisoning was developed in the eighteen thirties by an English
Speaker 1: chemist named James Marsh, and Marsh had been called on
Speaker 1: to try to test for arsenic in a case of
Speaker 1: suspected poisoning where a grandson was accused of murdering his
Speaker 1: grandfather by slipping some arsenic into the coffee. See it's
Speaker 1: like it's a common It happened a lot, a lot,
Speaker 1: and Marsh was able to produce a yellow precipitate from
Speaker 1: the stomach contents of the dead man, which was characteristic
Speaker 1: of arsenic. But the jury was not convinced and the
Speaker 1: defendant was acquitted. Later on, he did admit that he
Speaker 1: actually murdered his grandfather.
Speaker 2: Wow.
Speaker 1: And so Marsh, this chemist was really frustrated by the
Speaker 1: acquittal and also by the jury's kind of regard for
Speaker 1: his test, he was like, it was clearly arsenic poisoning.
Speaker 1: What do I have to do to convince you that
Speaker 1: this is a reliable test that you should use? And
Speaker 1: so that's what he devoted his time to. He wanted
Speaker 1: to try to make a new and improved and reliable
Speaker 1: test for arsenic and he did it. And I won't
Speaker 1: go into the how of the marsh test because it's
Speaker 1: probably confusing and beyond my chemical knowledge scope for sure,
Speaker 1: But the important thing was that it worked and that
Speaker 1: it could be reproduced in other labs. Later improvements made
Speaker 1: arsenic even more easily detected, either by making this test
Speaker 1: better or building a new test from scratch. But did
Speaker 1: these tests do anything to affect the rate of poisonings?
Speaker 2: I'm going to guess no.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's it's unclear, Okay. Even after the
Speaker 1: laws restricting the sale of arsenic were passed in England
Speaker 1: in eighteen fifty one, like I said, people continue to
Speaker 1: use it as a weapon, mostly because these laws were
Speaker 1: really difficult to enforce. By the time that intentional arsenic
Speaker 1: poisonings were on the decline, they had already left their
Speaker 1: mark in public consciousness and pop culture. When I think Arsenic,
Speaker 1: I think Agatha Christie. I think murder. She wrote, I
Speaker 1: think old cozy murder mystery books, which is like one
Speaker 1: of my favorite genres of books. As somebody tallied the
Speaker 1: different poisons used in works of detective fiction, and Arsenic
Speaker 1: came in third Wow, behind cyanide and mushrooms.
Speaker 2: Yep. Okay, mm hmm.
Speaker 1: And in Agatha Christie's books alone, Arsenic is mentioned either
Speaker 1: as a plot point or suspected poisoning or just in
Speaker 1: passing in nearly a quarter of her novels. Wow, that
Speaker 1: switches a lot. Also, I just love Agatha Christie so much.
Speaker 1: Our first hand account, of course, was taken from Madame Bovary,
Speaker 1: published in eighteen fifty six, also featuring Arsenic heavily. I
Speaker 1: just finished a couple days ago. We Have Always Lived
Speaker 1: in the Castle by Shirley Jackson, who also wrote The
Speaker 1: Lottery and Haunting of Hill House, and Arsenic is a
Speaker 1: main character in We Have Always Lived in the Castle,
Speaker 1: which is, by the way, such an amazing book.
Speaker 2: I loved it so much, okay, put it on my list.
Speaker 1: And I also have to mention Arsenic and Old Lace,
Speaker 1: which is a play later made into a movie. In
Speaker 1: the nineteen forties. The premise is absolutely absurd. These two
Speaker 1: old sisters rent out a room to elderly men that
Speaker 1: have no friends and no family, and then the sisters
Speaker 1: poison them out of kindness, out of kindness, out of kindness.
Speaker 1: And their poison of choice was not just arsenic. It
Speaker 1: was a blend, but arsenic was heavily featured at a
Speaker 1: long with strychnine and just a pinch of cyanide in
Speaker 1: some elderberry wine. And then the sister's nephew finds the
Speaker 1: bodies and chaos and hijinks and seue and it's fun times.
Speaker 1: It's based on a true story, by the way of
Speaker 1: like someone who owned a boarding house and would do this.
Speaker 2: I feel like I feel like boarding house murders are
Speaker 2: a thing I have read a lot about.
Speaker 1: Oh for sure, Yeah, for sure. I also love not
Speaker 1: just how often arsenic appears in books and movies, but
Speaker 1: how creative some of its uses are, Like a murderer
Speaker 1: infusing candles with arsenic so that when they were lit,
Speaker 1: they would poison the intended victim or I know, or
Speaker 1: my favorite, taking small amounts of arsenic to build up
Speaker 1: an immunity. A la princess bride and iakane powder, and
Speaker 1: this building an immunity to arsenic may be based on
Speaker 1: the so called arsenic eaters of Steia, which is a
Speaker 1: state in southeastern Austria. So people in this region would
Speaker 1: allegedly eat small amounts of arsenic to make their skin
Speaker 1: look better or to be better able to climb at
Speaker 1: high altitude, and this rumor, this legend grew really really
Speaker 1: famous in like the eighteen hundreds. Did they actually exist
Speaker 1: these arsenic eaters hard to say, but whether or not
Speaker 1: they were real, their legend had tremendous influence on the
Speaker 1: use of arsenic in the nineteenth century, when people were
Speaker 1: either poisoning their spouse or grandparent with the stuff, inhaling
Speaker 1: it while working in the minds, ingesting it with their candy,
Speaker 1: or absorbing it from their wallpaper or cosmetics. Eventually, the
Speaker 1: prevalence of arsenic in commercial goods or as a murder
Speaker 1: weapon started to decline in the twentieth century. But that's
Speaker 1: certainly not the end of arsenic story. And don't worry,
Speaker 1: I'm nearly done sticking with the three themes of arsenic
Speaker 1: as an intentional poison, a medicine, as an environmental contaminant.
Speaker 1: The twentieth century saw arsenic being developed, but not extensively,
Speaker 1: deployed as a chemical weapon during World War One, in
Speaker 1: the form of something called lewisite, which is also how
Speaker 1: I believe we started to develop treatment for arsenic poisoning
Speaker 1: in anticipation of its use as a weapon. The twentieth
Speaker 1: century also saw the emergence of arsenic as a truly
Speaker 1: effective medicine, first as a treatment for tripanisimiasis, then the
Speaker 1: first effective treatment for syphilis in the form of salvarsan,
Speaker 1: and later as a treatment for a certain type of
Speaker 1: leukemia called acute promylocidic leukemia. And arsenic is to this
Speaker 1: day a hugely important and prevalent environmental contaminant and erin
Speaker 1: I'm sure you'll talk more about this, but arsenic in
Speaker 1: drinking water poses a threat to tens of millions, maybe
Speaker 1: hundreds of millions of people around the world today, and
Speaker 1: although it's a global problem, one of the areas that
Speaker 1: highest risk is in Bangladesh and West Bengal. There in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies, a huge initiative was started to try
Speaker 1: to improve the water supply and reduce illness and death
Speaker 1: from waterborne pathogens, and so one solution proposed was to
Speaker 1: use tubewells to tap into cleaner water from the Himalayas.
Speaker 1: A bunch of international organizations got involved, and by two
Speaker 1: thousand there were close to eleven million tubewells in these regions,
Speaker 1: providing water to ninety seven percent of rural residence, and
Speaker 1: water borne illness and infant mortality dropped tremendously. But about
Speaker 1: ten years after this well building program really ramped up
Speaker 1: in the early nineteen eighties, is when a dermatologist noticed
Speaker 1: arsenical dermatosis in a patient and he linked it to
Speaker 1: the water from the tube well. This turned out to
Speaker 1: not just be a one off, but the beginning of
Speaker 1: one of the largest scale arsenic poisonings in the world.
Speaker 1: In the next four years after this first case, this
Speaker 1: doctor alone identified over twelve hundred cases from sixty one villages,
Speaker 1: and since arsenic poisoning can take a while to show
Speaker 1: up with its long term exposure chronic exposure, the extent
Speaker 1: of the poisoning was not realized until much later on,
Speaker 1: and really you could argue that we still don't necessarily
Speaker 1: have a good handle on it even today, since the
Speaker 1: wells are still being used in many places. So this
Speaker 1: is my quick segue here. But speaking of today and
Speaker 1: what's happening today, Erin, can you tell me what we
Speaker 1: know about arsenic poisonings or arsenic in medicine or arsenic
Speaker 1: in the environment these days?
Speaker 2: I would love to. Let's take a quick break first
Speaker 2: and then we'll get into it. So the World Health
Speaker 2: Organization actually lists arsenic and this blew my mind. But
Speaker 2: after that whole history section, I feel like this makes
Speaker 2: a lot of sense. It lists arsenic as the most
Speaker 2: significant chemical contaminant in drinking water globally period the most
Speaker 2: significant one arsenic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, I believe it.
Speaker 2: Now, I know exactly. Like when I read that, I
Speaker 2: was like what, and then the history and I was
Speaker 2: like wow, yeah. So groundwater contaminated with arsenic is a
Speaker 2: massive problem worldwide, with an estimated, according to the World
Speaker 2: Health Organization, one hundred and forty million people in fifty
Speaker 2: countries that are currently drinking water exposed to drinking water
Speaker 2: at levels well above what is considered The World Health
Speaker 2: Organization still listed as the kind of provisional guideline, meaning
Speaker 2: they're still looking at this to see if this is
Speaker 2: actually the best guideline but it's been the guideline for
Speaker 2: a while now, and that is ten parts per billion
Speaker 2: or ten micrograms per leader. So one hundred and forty
Speaker 2: million people in fifty countries are drinking water that is
Speaker 2: well above that. How high above that can really really vary.
Speaker 2: Like you mentioned Aaron, Bangladesh has some of the air
Speaker 2: that have the highest values that we've found in some
Speaker 2: areas in Bangladesh, drinking water has as much as eight
Speaker 2: hundred micrograms per leeter or eight hundred parts per billion
Speaker 2: of arsenic, which is so high. But in a lot
Speaker 2: of various rivers, streams, and other freshwater sources in various
Speaker 2: environmental studies have found as high as several thousand parts
Speaker 2: per billion. It just doesn't necessarily mean that that's in
Speaker 2: the drinking water. But the good news is that, especially
Speaker 2: in Bangladesh where we know these levels have been so high,
Speaker 2: a lot of progress has been made to try and
Speaker 2: reduce the number of people that are being exposed. The
Speaker 2: World Health Organization's most up to date numbers are unfortunately
Speaker 2: still rather old. They're from about twenty twelve, but then
Speaker 2: it was estimated that over thirty nine million people in
Speaker 2: Bangladesh specifically were exposed to levels over that ten micrograms
Speaker 2: per leeter in their drinking water, and nineteen million people
Speaker 2: were exposed to levels above fifty micrograms per later or
Speaker 2: fifty parts per billion, which is a lot higher than
Speaker 2: what our minimums should be or maximum. Yeah, and in
Speaker 2: one area of Bangladesh, an estimated twenty one percent of
Speaker 2: deaths were actually attributed to arsenic poisoning. Twenty one percent.
Speaker 1: Of deaths, twenty one percent.
Speaker 2: I know, it's so much higher than I realized.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Globally, mostly the sources still are just various environmental sources.
Speaker 2: Arsenic is found in rock in volcanic ash, like you said,
Speaker 2: but anthropogenic sources like mining, the burning of fossil fuels,
Speaker 2: working in industries like alloy making, et cetera. Arsenic containing
Speaker 2: pesticides are not really used in the US very much anymore.
Speaker 2: They're not, from what I can tell, completely eliminated, but
Speaker 2: the use of them has declined significantly. Arsenic is still
Speaker 2: used in treating lumber. That's one of the main areas
Speaker 2: that it's still used as a sort of pesticide. It's
Speaker 2: for like an anti fungal h so treated lumber is
Speaker 2: generally treated with arsenic.
Speaker 1: Interesting, I would not know that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so wash your hand. That's why they always
Speaker 2: say to wash your hands after you're working with treated lumber.
Speaker 2: It's not necessarily the exposure via your hands, but just
Speaker 2: you know how much it's easy to get that on
Speaker 2: your face or mucus membranes after handling it. And one
Speaker 2: thing that I kind of really was trying to get
Speaker 2: a handle on, in addition to those numbers that I
Speaker 2: mentioned which weren't really that satisfying to me when I
Speaker 2: was trying to get a sense of like the global
Speaker 2: state of arsenic epidemiology or whatever I usually do in
Speaker 2: this section, is that the vast majority of papers that
Speaker 2: I found, even the ones that were like seemed from
Speaker 2: the title that they were going to be talking about
Speaker 2: the epidemiology of chronic arsenic or of arsenic exposure, most
Speaker 2: of these papers were actually more focused on the mechanistic underpinnings,
Speaker 2: like here's what you should understand about the mechanistic effects
Speaker 2: if you want to study the relationship of arsenic and
Speaker 2: its various potential effects. And so it seems like from
Speaker 2: what I can gather and from the papers that we're
Speaker 2: trying to kind of assess the state of arsenic knowledge.
Speaker 2: The biggest thing that researchers are really trying to get
Speaker 2: a better handle on are some of these very specific
Speaker 2: mechanisms to explain the health effects that I talked about
Speaker 2: in the biology section. Because as much as we know, okay,
Speaker 2: it can affect these various enzymes, it can react with
Speaker 2: thiols and self hydrals, it can mimic phosphate. Because there
Speaker 2: is such interactions between exposure to arsenic and exposure to
Speaker 2: so many other things or things like malnutrition, et cetera,
Speaker 2: a lot of the epidemiological studies can result in mixed results,
Speaker 2: especially when you're looking at very low levels of arsenic exposure.
Speaker 2: So we know all of those health effects from very
Speaker 2: high levels of exposure, but when we get down to
Speaker 2: the like ten parts per billion, fifteen parts per billion,
Speaker 2: five parts per billion, the data becomes a lot less clear.
Speaker 2: And it seems like a lot of that is because
Speaker 2: we don't fully understand the effects that arsenic is having
Speaker 2: on our bodies. So a lot of the research seems
Speaker 2: to be focusing on that, especially at lower levels of exposure.
Speaker 2: Like if we can understand specifically what does arsenic do
Speaker 2: when it gets into our body, and how much does
Speaker 2: it take to cause that in various people. Then you
Speaker 2: can have more data to say, no, this really is
Speaker 2: an acceptable level, and this level is not acceptable at all,
Speaker 2: if that makes sense.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so.
Speaker 2: That is kind of what I researched, at least when
Speaker 2: it comes to arsenic. I tried to look into arsenic
Speaker 2: in rice because I don't know about you erin, but
Speaker 2: when I think of arsenic poisoning, I think of rice.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I.
Speaker 2: Actually didn't even know why in my brain I had
Speaker 2: that association. But arsenic is something it is ubiquitous. But
Speaker 2: one of the reasons that it can be found in
Speaker 2: relatively high levels in rice and in things like rice cereal,
Speaker 2: which for a while was touted as like the best
Speaker 2: thing to feed your baby rice cereal is because of
Speaker 2: the way that rice is grown and harvested. So it's
Speaker 2: not necessarily rice specific, but it's the way that rice
Speaker 2: is grown, which is often under flood irrigation, and so
Speaker 2: in places where you want to be able to grow
Speaker 2: rice during the dry season where you don't have as
Speaker 2: much rainfall, if groundwater is used for that flooding. Groundwater
Speaker 2: can contain a lot of arsenic. And on top of that,
Speaker 2: the way that rice grows in this flood irrigation happens
Speaker 2: to be really good conditions for arsenic to be in
Speaker 2: that form of arsenite, the reduced form, which is very
Speaker 2: toxic and bioavailable, and so it's easily taken up in
Speaker 2: the rice and accumulates in the rice in high levels.
Speaker 2: And then when you dry that rice out, pulverize it
Speaker 2: and concentrate it into something like a baby cereal, where
Speaker 2: you're exposed to a lot more rice than you would
Speaker 2: be if you were just eating a bowl of rice.
Speaker 2: Then it's even more concentrated, and so that's how you
Speaker 2: end up with high levels of arsenic potentially in something
Speaker 2: like rice or a rice cereal. Okay, it's not Rice
Speaker 2: isn't the bad guy.
Speaker 1: Right, right, But.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's that's a nutshell of arsenic current events sarin.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's it's a complicated topic because because its
Speaker 1: distribution is so uneven, and it seems like even we
Speaker 1: just don't have a good handle on everything, no, which
Speaker 1: is kind of yeah, kind of a little scary.
Speaker 2: And kind of scary and all of those things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I feel like we covered a lot of
Speaker 1: ground in this episode. And I just also wanted to
Speaker 1: say that if I left out your favorite arsenic trivia
Speaker 1: or favorite arsenic movie or book or whatever, like maybe
Speaker 1: you wanted to talk about the anacondomine in Montana or
Speaker 1: how arsenic was used in dentistry forever, please share it
Speaker 1: on the social media post announcing this episode's release or
Speaker 1: wherever you want to share it, because we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear more about arsenic.
Speaker 2: I love it. Well, should we do sources?
Speaker 1: Let's do sources. I have several. I'm going to shout
Speaker 1: out two in particular, one by Apata and Pfeifer from
Speaker 1: twenty nineteen is about the evolution of that variant of
Speaker 1: that arsenic metabolism gene. That's a really interesting one. And
Speaker 1: then for the big history section, mostly I used a
Speaker 1: book called King of Poisons by John pariscandala all all
Speaker 1: about arsenic.
Speaker 2: I had a number of papers that have so much
Speaker 2: more detail on what we know about the mechanisms of
Speaker 2: arsenic and its effects on our body. A couple that
Speaker 2: I'll shout out one from Toxicology International from twenty eleven
Speaker 2: that was just called Mechanisms pertaining to arsenic toxicity. And
Speaker 2: then there was actually a great Department of Health and
Speaker 2: Human Services, like very comprehensive. It was called the Toxicologic
Speaker 2: Profile for Arsenic and it was from the Agency for
Speaker 2: Toxic Substances and Disease Registry, and that's really comprehensive and
Speaker 2: also has some data about what the state of arsenic
Speaker 2: is in the world and in the US. We will
Speaker 2: post the full list of our sources from this episode
Speaker 2: and everyone of our episodes on our website this podcast
Speaker 2: will Kill You dot Com under the episode STAB.
Speaker 1: Thank you to Bloodmobile for providing the music for this
Speaker 1: episode and all of our episodes.
Speaker 2: Thank you to the Exactly Right Network, and.
Speaker 1: Thank you to you listeners. We hope that you liked
Speaker 1: this one. I think I did. I loved it. Actually
Speaker 1: I really liked it.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, thanks thanks for listening, and especial thank you
Speaker 2: to our patrons for supporting us on Patreon. We can't
Speaker 2: tell you how much it means to us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, truly. Well until next time, wash your hands.
Speaker 3: Yeah failthy animals, bum
Speaker 1: Bumbo ou