Deborah Blum
dblum | March 9, 2010Elemental mercury is a slippery substance.
In the earth's crust, it anchors itself by bonding with other elements, creating materials like the rough coppery rock cinnabar, a crystalline combination of mercury and sulfur. Once cinnabar, or other metallic ores, are mined and crushed, mercury can be easily extracted. Then the warmer above-ground temperatures, the decrease in pressure, cause pure mercury to become a very odd liquid metal.
Unlike a drop of water, a drop of mercury touched by a finger does not wet the skin. Instead, it breaks into smaller drops, tiny glittering balls that…
dblum | March 3, 2010A little over a week ago, I wrote a story for Slate called The Chemists' War. It was based on information I'd uncovered for my book, The Poisoner's Handbook, and it detailed a forgotten program of the U.S. government to poison alcohol supplies during the 1920s.
The poisoning program was an outgrowth of federal frustration over the failure of Prohibition. Supporters of the 18th Constitutional amendment - which made illegal trade and commerce in potable spirits - had expected it to result in more sober (literally) and upright citizenry. Instead, crime syndicates grew wealthy selling bootleg…
dblum | February 26, 2010Cyanides are old poisons, with a uniquely long, dark history, probably because they grow so bountifully around us.
They flavor the leaves of the yew tree, flowers of the cherry laurel, the kernels of peach and apricot pits, the fat pale crunch of bitter almonds. They ooze in secretions of insects like millipedes, weave a toxic thread through cyanobacteria, mass in the floating blue-green algae along the edges of the murkier ponds and lakes, live in plants threaded through forests and fields.
But cyanide didn't really become a widely used poison until the 18th century, beginning with some…
dblum | February 17, 2010One of the most repeated rules in toxicology is this: the dose makes the poison.
In other words, a milligram of arsenic is unlikely to kill you. Make that 200 milligrams and a cemetery plot awaits. Seems obvious, right? But what if we're talking about a benign substance - say a drink of cold water? And this is pure water, free of arsenic and any other toxic substance.
If the dose goes up in the same proportion - if instead of drinking a standard 8-ounce glass of water you gulp down 160 ounces - could it kill you? Absolutely yes.
People have been convicted of homicide in water poisoning cases…
dblum | February 15, 2010A story in today's Salt Lake City Tribune carries this rather obscure headline: "Poison Death Rate is High." What poison, what death rate, you wonder? Where?
And the story deserved better than that because what it says is that residents of Utah die from poisons at twice the rate of people living elsewhere in the country. The national average for poison fatalities - mostly accidents and suicides - is 11 deaths per 100,000 residents annually. In Utah, though, the yearly rate is 21.3 per 100,000.
Why Utah, you wonder? Even the state officials aren't sure. The state has its share of unusual…
dblum | February 14, 2010Last week, The Poisoner's Handbook got a great, pre-publication review in one of my favorite magazines, New Scientist. I was thrilled - and relieved. Hard to say which came first. The week before publication - the book's official date is Feb. 22 - always makes me a little crazy.
But much as I like my work being called "fascinating" (and I do, I do), it was the closing sentence of the review that really spoke to me: "Alas, sometimes the poisoners we seek are ourselves." Collins was referring to the findings by the 1920s toxicologist in my book that carbon monoxide was becoming such an…
dblum | February 12, 2010The poison, according to Greek mythology, could be traced to the gates of hell. It dripped from the jaws of Cerberus, the hulking three-headed dog that guarded the entrance to the underworld.
For centuries, it's carried the taint of dark magic. The ancient Greeks called it the Queen of Poisons, the deadliest of all. People called it wolfsbane, dogsbane, even - rather horrifyingly - wifesbane. The poison's reputation has intrigued writers over the years. Oscar Wilde used it in his story of a determined murderer, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime. It was used by a character in James Joyce's…
dblum | January 13, 2010My new book - The Poisoner's Handbook - will be published next month (February 18). But it's already having this effect on my life: my husband has developed a nervous habit of moving his coffee cup out of my reach. When the Wall Street Journal published an excerpt of the book (see link below) I promptly received the following e-mail: "Read the wonderful weekend section front in the Journal. But the coffee my wife just handed me tastes a little odd."Â When the invitation was sent out for my book launch party, it read: "We promise that the beer, wine, and snacks will be completely…
rskloot | November 14, 2009
Big week here at Culture Dish! The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks and its author (yours truly) were on the cover of Publishers Weekly (please note: THRILLED!). Inside that issue was a profile of me with some of book's backstory, a short excerpt from the book (longer excerpt coming soon in O, the Oprah Magazine), also a story I wrote about the crazy book tour I'm organizing (posted about previously here). But that was just the beginning of this week's HeLa developments. More about that after the jump, but first, a warning: given the fact that my book is about to be released and I'll be on…