The flood of pictures of Catherine is threatening to overcome my laptop’s hard drive. As a result, I’ve been organizing and archiving the digital pictures from the last few years so that I don’t lose anything. While doing so, I found … the way to redemption.
![[Redemption]](http://whenchemistsattack.com/blogfiles/vegas_redemption.jpg)
The way to redemption begins, as you can see, in a blazing pit of fire. Where is this blazing pit of fire? In Las Vegas, of course. You can find anything in Vegas. Including … redemption.
The conventional wisdom says that you shouldn’t eat or drink anything that students might leave for you. Paranoid? Perhaps.
Perhaps not – when fifth graders are involved. The Charleston Post and Courier reports:
Sixteen fifth-graders met with a police investigator Tuesday and answered questions relating to the poisoning of a Boulder Bluff Elementary School [in Goose Creek, SC] teacher who fell ill in class earlier this month, school officials said.
The four questions dealt generally with the circumstances surrounding the Nov. 16 incident, which is thought to have resulted after the teacher ingested methanol and a chemical [ethylene glycol] found in antifreeze.
That’s quite a poisonous brew. The lethal dose for either ethylene glycol or methanol is about a hundred milliliters. In other words, drinking about a quarter of a soda can of either substance could kill you.
And if you don’t die from the stuff, you will not have a pleasant day. From the MSDS sheets,
[Methanol can cause] headache, drowsiness, nausea, vomiting, blurred vision, blindness, coma, and death.
[Ehtylene glycol can cause] CNS depression, vomiting, headache, rapid respiratory and heart rate, lowered blood pressure, stupor, collapse, and unconsciousness with convulsions. Death from respiratory arrest or cardiovascular collapse may follow.
Nasty stuff.
From the article, it appears that students are possible suspects in the poisoning.
‘It’s terrifying,’ Stiles [a mother of one of the 5th graders] said. ‘If it was a child in the teacher’s class who did it, it scares me that someone who is 10 or 11 years old would know how to mix those substances and do that.’
Actually, it’s not that hard to mix those two very common chemicals together. Both mix very well with water and are colorless. Methanol has a characteristic odor, but ethylene glycol doesn’t.
![[Dangerous things often look like nothing special - from Star Ocean: The Second Story for Playstation]](http://whenchemistsattack.com/blogfiles/so2_dangerousthings_tiny.jpg)
Getting the teacher to ingest the mixture would be more difficult than concocting it, but it’s not beyond the realm of possibility.
That said, this particular school has been having other problems. I hope the police have a few adult suspects.