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As soon as I got to the part of the article where they said it was as powerful a poison as sodium cyanide, I knew they were full of it. Here is an excerpt from toxicology testing on sodium azide, at the following website:
http://www.epa.gov/iris/subst/0191.htm
"Data regarding the effects of oral exposure of humans to sodium azide are available, but limited. During investigations of the effects of metabolic inhibition on cancer patients, it was observed that sodium azide lowered the blood pressure of hypertensive but not normotensive individuals (Black et al., 1954). This report further indicated that nine normotensive individuals, including both individuals and cancer patients, experienced no "sustained effect" on blood pressure from the ingestion of as much as 1.3 mg of sodium azide, 3 times/day for 10 days (3.9 mg/day or 0.056 mg/kg/day for a 70-kg man). In a separate study, Black et al. (1954) measured blood pressure 4-12 hours after the last dosage in 30 hypertensive patients treated orally with 0.5-1.3 mg sodium azide, 3 times/day for periods ranging from 7 days to 2.5 years; 25/30 patients sustained lowering of blood pressure towards normotensive levels. Some patients developed an increased sensitivity to the drug with repeated treatment, necessitating a reduction in dosage to 0.25 mg, 3 times/day (0-75 mg/day or 0.011 mg/kg/day). No evidence of damage to the kidney, heart or liver was detected in routine clinical studies of the three hypertensive patients who ingested sodium azide for 1-2.5 years. Despite short duration of exposure (10 days), sodium azide at dosages up to 0.056 mg/kg/day did not produce altered blood pressure in normotensive subjects. The limited information tends to support the rat NOEL of 3.57 mg/kg/day."
Also, they don't know the difference between pronation (rotation of a body part around its long axis) and protonation (addition of a proton in an acid-base reaction). Also, they don't know that, chemically, nitrogen gas and metallic nitrogen are as different as night and day. It's possible that the scientist they quote knows something about azides, but the writers of the article are ignorant of all things scientific.
posted by 216.165.151...
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