This medical report suggests a possible drawback to having children get their faces painted, at least at some Dragon Boat Festivals: “A cultural practice of drinking realgar wine leading to elevated urinary arsenic and its potential health risk,” Ying-Nan Zhang, Guo-Xin Sun, Paul N. Williams, Qing Huang, Yong-Guan Zhu, Environment International, 2011 Jul;37(5):889-92. The authors, […]
Tag: arsenic
Dr. Redfield, her pink hair, arsenic life and all that
A mini-documentary about pink-haired Dr. Redfield and her take on the much-publicized claim that a form of life in a lake in California has DNA with a curious chemical composition: [HT @scicurious]
Almost-poisoning pigeons in the park
As the heavens inevitably cover every mountain peak with snow, so do pigeons unstoppably deposit a protective white layer atop every outdoor statue – or so people believed. Yukio Hirose shocked and delighted the world by disproving one of these two supposedly eternal truths. He used arsenic to do it. Chemistry provides a way to communicate […]