poisons
moleculeoftheday | February 6, 2007Chromated copper arsenate is an interesting one. It is a mixture of the copper salts of chromic acid and arsenic acid.
CCA provides robust protection against the sun, fungus, and bacteria. Unfortunately, chromium (VI) and arsenic are quite toxic, and can leach from the wood.
One problem with wood is that it's essentially tree meat - once it's separated from its host, loads of protection against microbial action and sunlight are absent. CCA provides this, and quite well. You've seen lots of CCA wood - most lumber with a greenish tint is CCA-treated. During wood's regular life, CCA doesn't…
moleculeoftheday | January 15, 2007I don't think I'll ever be able to pick out which mushrooms aren't poisonous. Poisons vary pretty widely across species; a lot of them are small peptide type molecules. One of the few simple small molecule mushroom poisons is orellanine:
It bears a striking similarity to the bipyridyl ligand previously covered, Methyl Viologen (Paraquat).