The lethal doses of 55 substances - eviltoast
  • jadero@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    Ingesting gasoline is deadly in far smaller doses due to something called hydrocarbon pneumonia. My dad very nearly died as a result of having a tiny amount get past his throat while siphoning gas to a small engine’s tank.

    If you must siphon gas, go buy a cheap “pump siphon” from Canadian Tire.

    • LuckyBoy@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I dont have any canadian tire near me as I live in europe. What do you advice?

      • jadero@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        This is what I was referring to. There are a number of variations on the theme.

        If you are really in a pinch:

        1. Feed a length of hose into the source until only a small amount is left clear of the liquid.

        2. Put your thumb over the exposed end, or otherwise make the end as close to airtight as possible.

        3. Rapidly pull the hose out of the liquid, moving the end down to the destination container. The end must be below the top surface of the source, the further the better.

        4. Release your thumb/seal. If you’ve done it all correctly, the hose will be nearly filled with liquid and enough of it will be below the surface of the source to start the siphoning process.

        If the source liquid is too far below the opening for this to work with the length of hose you have, you can manually pump it far enough to start a siphon, by rapidly submerging and lifting the hose while alternating the closing of the top. Open top while submerging, closed top while lifting. You have to push down faster than what gravity pulls the liquid back down. Ideally, you’re lifting fast enough to get some help from the liquid’s own inertia when you reverse course.

    • No_Eponym@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      A great way to help people understand how “What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” is almost always untrue.

    • ExfilBravo@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I was going to say I smoke/eat more than 1200mg of THC a day and I’m not dead yet (yes I have a problem and yes it’s expensive).

      • pftbest@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        This is per kilogram of your mass. So if your weight is 80kg then the lethal dose would be 96000mg not 1200. At least that’s how I understand this.

        • Einar@lemm.ee
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          9 months ago

          So that means 7.2 litres of water to kill an 80 kg human. That’s a lot of water to down in one short sitting.

          Not easy to do. Fortunately.

          • Chekhovs_Gun@lemmy.world
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            9 months ago

            Back in college, there was this thing called the “4, 4, 40 challenge” where one would have to drink 4 liters of water, in 4 minutes and hold it down for 40 secs. Lots of vomiting would ensue.

          • kinsnik@lemmy.world
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            8 months ago

            So that means 7.2 litres of water to kill an 80 kg human

            well, not exactly. since this is the LD50, drinking 7.2 liters of water would kill about half of the population that try. the other half would survive

      • Pipoca@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        More than 1200 mg of pure THC, or 1200mg of cannabis leaves?

        Those aren’t even remotely the same thing, in the same way that 12oz of beer and 12oz of everclear are very different, or 1g of pure nicotine is very different than 1g of tobacco leaves.

        Not to mention, LD50 is about a single dose. There’s a big difference between taking one shot an hour for 16 hours straight, and chugging 16 shots in one go.

    • SorryQuick@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      Looking at the wikipedia page for some of those, it seems to be intravenously. For example, Botox (the last one): “A toxin is 1.3–2.1 ng/kg intravenously or intramuscularly, 10–13 ng/kg when inhaled, or 1000 ng/kg when taken by mouth”

  • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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    9 months ago

    This is hilariously bad.

    It doesn’t take into account so many things, and it’s extremely misleading.

    Most of these chemicals don’t ever appear in products in their pure form, so there’s so much here that simply isn’t relevant.

    There’s also consideration here that everything is by weight, and it makes sense to create that as a standard, but many of the pure forms of these items are far more dense than you would expect. One that stands out is uranium. A gram of it would be incredibly small, approximately 0.05 cm cubed. 1 lb is around 1.45" cubed (for my American friends).

    So it would be an insanely small amount. Meanwhile water is insanely light by comparison. While also safer per gram, so it’s an insanely large amount of water before any damage can be done while a relatively small rock of uranium can tear your DNA apart.

    The whole chart is wildly misleading. It might be accurate, though, I have no idea if it is, but the fact is that it makes it seem like normal every day compounds like vitamin B will kill you at lower doses than uranium. While technically true based on weight, it makes uranium seem relatively safe by comparison and bluntly it’s not. Even the smallest amount of pure uranium, which this chart would regard as “safe”, would cause you to become incredibly sick for a very long time.

    I hope nobody gathers “new” information from this chart and decides to do something stupid; but honestly, there’s a lot of idiots in the world, and if anyone is that dumb, I wonder if the average intelligence of the planet might increase a bit.

    • Dharma Curious@startrek.website
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      9 months ago

      I mean, as an ex smoker i had a “I could try coke maybe?” intrusive thought when I saw nicotine’s level compared to cocaine. Lmao

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        I look at that and I’m not sure that’s right either. Maybe if you took concentrated nicotine extract (pure) and drank it, then yeah, it could become lethal.

        I don’t think anyone can smoke enough cigarettes or vape enough to reach a dangerous toxicity level. I’m pretty sure you’d pass out long before reaching a fatal dose. So the only way you could get to that point is to either inject, ingest or otherwise absorb a lot of nicotine all at once. The usual delivery methods (via the lungs) would probably not work for this. I suppose if you rigged up a continual tobacco burner and hot boxed an area with smoke containing nicotine (either vapor or smoke from burning it), maybe? Or if you slapped on a few dozen nicotine patches after smoking a few packs and went to bed?

        The only other way I can think of to get that much nicotine in you is to buy high concentration vape liquid and drink it; but I’m pretty sure your body would simply vomit it back out and you’d survive. I’m sure it wouldn’t be pleasant, but it wouldn’t be fatal.

        Cocaine on the other hand… I don’t know enough about, but I’m sure people have OD’d on it, so I’m sure there are ways.

    • Tlaloc_Temporal@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      I was wondering if the radioactive materials toxicity was measured by chemical toxicity only, ignoring the radiation.

      • MystikIncarnate@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        It’s very likely.

        Everything radioactive is incredibly dangerous.

        I work with WiFi professionally, so I have a pretty good understanding of radio waves from that. On top of that, I’m a radio hobbyist, so I gathered a pretty good understanding of electromagnetic waves and how they operate… Mainly in the context of getting them from A to B successfully, but the physics behind it does not change regardless of frequency.

        While all radio waves can dissipate as heat when absorbed by an object, the wavelength of that signal affects how small of an object it will interact with. Lead is a good example, since it’s a dense lattice of atoms and can interact with most electrical and magnetic fields. Radio waves have a hard time penetrating even a small layer of lead because they’re usually too large of a wave to fit between the atoms. At a certain, very high, frequency, lead gets less effective, and only by making that lead layer thicker and thicker, basically putting the randomness of atom arrangement in the path of the wave, can the signal be stopped.

        When a high frequency wave interacts with flesh, like a person, it will usually penetrate a distance then be absorbed into the material, this is the basic principle that allows x-ray imaging to work. The more dense the material (bones vs muscle and organs and such), the more is absorbed, and you get a dark spot on the resulting image. I won’t get into the development of the images, because they’re usually inverted, that’s a function of photography and how pictures work.

        Taken to the extreme, higher and higher frequency signals, like uranium produces, goes even further, interacting with the atoms that make up your DNA, and destroying them. It’s a gruesome process and it takes a long time before the symptoms of radiation appear, and a very long recovery (or death) in most cases. With uranium, you’d die from radiation long before the toxicity of the uranium can kill you, even if you’re “only” taking <something less than a lethal quantity>.

        Knowing as much as I do, radiation at this level is scary. It’s silent, with no visible indication that it’s happening, and it will kill you dead without any indication it ever existed. It always humors me when people take up arms against some new wireless technology where the principle frequency is under 100Ghz, and people are so afraid of it giving them cancer. The lightbulbs in your house are more apt to give you cancer than 5G or whatever. Light is an electromagnetic wave, the same as the radios in the 5G towers, but light is in the terahertz range, over 500x higher frequency than your wifi. Above that, in terms of frequency is UV-A, UV-B, etc, up to x-rays, and on. Above x-ray, is all the radioactive emissions from uranium, plutonium, etc. Literally thousands of times higher frequency than the evil 5G. EM only becomes ionizing (aka, dangerous) around UV-B, which is why you should always wear sunscreen.

        We (humans) only use higher frequency EM in the context of medical use (cancer treatments, x-rays, etc) in highly controlled environments, and for use in power plants and bombs. I’m sure some industrial uses exist too, but I’ll just skip over that since it usually has the same controls as medical uses. The only other place I know of that we use radioactive material at all is in smoke detectors. We limit it, we regulate it, we keep the stupid public away from it, because they don’t know the danger of such substances.

        Sorry for the rant, but yeah. Holy shit.

    • Lev_Astov@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      It really should have been theobromine, from chocolate. It’s 1000mg/kg via oral ingestion.

      This is what kills dogs, as they’re more susceptible at 200mg/kg. They’ve gotta really pack in the chocolate first to reach that, though. And it had better be dark chocolate for its higher levels of theobromine. Pure cocoa has about 2.1% theobromine by weight.

  • Dieinahole@kbin.social
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    9 months ago

    Yeah, I don’t buy this shit at all.

    How many people die each year from acetaminophen overdoses? Versus how many die from THC?

    This whole infographic is a crock of shit

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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      9 months ago

      You’re confusing 50% lethal dose (medical property of a substance in relation to the body) with death rate (property of a death cause, obtained statistically from a population at a specific time). This is pure medical data which still may be slightly inaccurate, but you can easily check relevant scientific papers for their estimate of the LD₅₀. I think all values presented here are correct within a factor of 2, unless you find a reputable journal stating a very different result. Each substance is available in different concentrations and humans’ exposure to them also varies. You can get lots of pure water, sugar or gasoline easily but not a gram of viruses. Nobody would voluntarily consume a substantial amount of gasoline but nanograms of viruses come and go in the air all the time.

      It is somewhat misleading to group poisons, radioactive isotopes and viruses as they work in very different ways, but the gist is correct. And yes, the LD₅₀ is still a statistical estimate dependent on the humans studied, but not on society etc. like the death rate.

      Edit: some substances will be ejected by the body relatively fast (water), some bioaccumulate (heavy metals) and some “biomutiply” (viruses). This is why you haven’t died despite having drunk lots of water.

      • hydroptic@sopuli.xyz
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        9 months ago

        It is somewhat misleading to group poisons, radioactive isotopes and viruses

        Far as I can tell there aren’t any viruses in there? There’s a few bacterial toxins, but they’re… well, toxins.

        Also, the grouping isn’t misleading. Not only is eg. plutonium fairly toxic (because it’s a heavy metal) in addition to giving off ionizing radiation, but calculating an LD50 for something doesn’t require it to be toxic, just that some dose of it kills. There’s some µg/kg ingested (or inhaled or whatever) dose of polonium that will kill 50% of a study animal population dead, regardless of what the mechanism that kills them actually is

        • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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          9 months ago

          You are right, those aren’t viruses. But you can imagine that a virus or prion (like botulinum) might have a very small LD₅₀. I discussed the radioactivity/toxicity in another comment, you are correct - but a tiny amount of any element can quickly kill you from decay radiation if it’s a very unstable isotope.

          And yes, if you understand what LD₅₀ means, the mechanism is the confusing part. Ingesting naturally occuring uranium will not kill you primarily from radiation despite the ☢️ symbol on the infographic, and vitamin D won’t kill you if you only get it from the Sun. And I was primarily correcting the misunderstanding in the above critique, not defending everything about the picture.

    • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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      9 months ago

      For the THC though it would be grams of pure THC, not grams of weed

      • morbidcactus@lemmy.ca
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        9 months ago

        I legit cannot imagine consuming 1g of THC let alone 1g/kg, you’d literally be eating thousands of gummies if you’re doing edibles (10mg seems to be the strongest edibles I can get) which would be really expensive, rough for a 70kg person would be nearly 9000 10mg gummies which are like $4 cad each, would cost $36,000.

        I guess you could do it, but practically, no one is going to do that much

        • Transporter Room 3@startrek.website
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          9 months ago

          At that point just get a crack spoon, warm up some resin, and go to town on your veins. It’ll be easier, quicker, cheaper, and probably won’t make you want to die from consuming all that food… You’ll still die, just not because you stabbed yourself to relieve the bloating.

        • BCsven@lemmy.ca
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          9 months ago

          Exactly. just listened to something about the EU allowing a chemical during growing that stunts stalk length so plants are stiffer and lower to grouns for agriculture. US doeant allow it for agriculture but allows import of EU grain. Some articles trying to be alarmist state that urine analyais is ahowing increase in this chemical of people eating breakfast cereal. What the article left out (and podcaster calculated) was you would need to eat 85000kg of oats daily, to sustain a lethal dose.

    • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
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      9 months ago

      It’s probably all correct, but super misleading. There’s probably no way to overdose on THC other than drinking loads of highly concentrated oil. Just like there’s no way to overdose on LSD, since it gets taken smaller doses.

      You consume grams of salt, milligrams of meth, vitamin D, …, and micrograms of acid.

      So the important part is “how close is the usual dose people take to the lethal dose, and will your body rebel before you get there (e.g. it’s hard to eat that much salt or drink much water)” or in other words “how likely is it to accidentally overdose”.

      • SirSamuel@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        It’s not “super misleading”. It’s just very simplified. It’s an infographic, and inherently lacks nuance. The creator tried with loads of fine print both before and after the pictures, but who reads fine print, right?

        The rest of your points are correct, especially the likelihood of accidental overdose. And the OP of this thread is… I’m gonna be generous and stay they are childish. Hopefully they learned something from all of the responses here

      • scottywh@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Most of the numbers used in this data are also extrapolated from studies using rats and mice so the direct applicability to humans is uncertain at best.

    • Pipoca@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Keep in mind: a single extra strength Tylenol is 500mg. A standard dose for a headache is 2 pills, or 1000mg.

      Weed gummies come in doses of 1mg to 100mg. 1mg is a microdose people might take for mild pain or stress, while 50+mg is a dose for cancer patients often take. A standard dose for occasional recreational highs is 5mg; they recommend first timers start at 2.5mg.

      LD50 compares things by weight, rather than dose. By weight, THC is slightly more toxic than acetaminophen. But in terms of the number of therapeutic doses it takes to kill you, it’s way, way safer.

      • Taniwha420@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Yes, I came here for this conversation. What’s the ratio of effective dose to LD50 again, because that’s typically what matters. That’s where cannabis and ethanol are in totally different categories. And how high do you need to get before dying from LSD?

        • Pipoca@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          16.5 mg is 16500 μg. So a 70kg person would need over 1 million μg.

          According to https://www.trippingly.net/lsd/the-lsd-dosage-guide, 25 μg is where visual effects start.

          700 to 1000 μg. Full out-of-body experiences. Synesthesia more likely. Religious imagery often strong. Entire loss of rationality, lack of ability to walk or interact in any meaningful way.

          1500 μgs+ Experiences may be similar to DMT but extended. Basic body functions are challenging. Vision is consumed by hallucinations. No sense of self remains. Audio hallucinations may be strong. Standard reality no longer applies. Merging with objects likely. No type of rational thought left.

          A deadly dose is around 800x higher than that. You wouldn’t be as high as a kite. You’d be as high as Voyager one.

        • sicarius@lemmy.world
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          9 months ago

          That dose of 16.5mg/kg ld50 is for rats.
          Mice is lower at 0.3mg/kg.
          There have been no know deaths from humans overdosing on lsd, even when people have taken ridiculously high amounts by mistaking it for cocaine and railing lines of it up their nose.
          Sure, a little coma, hypERthermia and light gastric bleeding but nothing a short stint in the hospital didn’t sort em out with no lasting effects.

      • excitingburp@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        This is why grapefruit is so dangerous for so many medicines. Those medicines take bioavailability into account and can be a massive dose in some cases. Grapefruit keeps the same mechanism that lowers effective dosage busy, substantially increasing the effective dose - straight into overdose territory in some cases.

      • PopMyCop@iusearchlinux.fyi
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        9 months ago

        Aye, I’ve always liked the ratio better. It really puts into perspective how fast and loose some of our entertainments are. Compare the health warnings on OTC drugs like tylenol/acetaminophen/paracetamol to the bare minimum labeling of alcohol, yet alcohol’s equivalent (or much less, in some estimations) to the painkiller.

    • ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.de
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      9 months ago

      Death rate is society-dependent. If we only paid with lead coins and never washed our hands, cases of lead poisoning would skyrocket even if the element and our bodies remained the same (and so would LD₅₀). Thankfully, our society knows about the danger and limits the intake of lead to small amounts and/or small concentrations.

    • BearOfaTime@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      You should work on reading comprehension.

      Where does it say anything about mortality rates?

      It shows lethal doses.

    • orphiebaby@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      The fact that your completely misunderstanding ass got upvoted so hard really shows that people are pretty fast to be pretty stupid.

  • Faresh@lemmy.ml
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    9 months ago

    This looks like a quite useless guide. All these substances appear in vastly different doses in the environment, so it in no way shows what is more likely to kill you or accurately shows what you are supposed to be careful with.

    • Einar@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Not sure this is supposed to be a “guide”. At least I hope it isn’t.

      More of a general info sheet, maybe.

    • Dale@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      Yeah, the ld50 for gasoline is 5000 mg/kg, not 14,000 which is the limit for acute toxicity. This whole chart is shit.

    • ugh@lemm.ee
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      9 months ago

      Specifically from the sun, too. I have never heard of anyone dying from too much sun exposure that’s not related to the temperature or skin damage.

      • sep@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        Not possible to get 3-3.5 grams (based on bodey weigth) of d vitamin from the sun. Since the body produce about 25 micrograms in 10-15 minutes during peak summer. And would just flush the excess. To be leathal it would need to be in one single dose.

      • blindsight@beehaw.org
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        9 months ago

        1000 IU of Vitamin D is 25 mcg. So the LD50 for an 80 kg adult is 37×80×1000÷25 ≈ 120 000 vitamin D pills.

        I think you’ll be fine.

    • Dieinahole@kbin.social
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      9 months ago

      Yeah, the studies that have been done to find the ld50 of thc ah… haven’t.

      There’s a guestimate, but there’s actually no biological reason that you even could.

      This whole chart is bullshit

      • butterflyattack@lemmy.world
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        9 months ago

        I’m pretty sure the figure for heroin is on the high side too. Most people won’t have a tolerance, and a lethal dose would be quite a bit lower than this.

    • Buffaloaf@lemmy.world
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      9 months ago

      I assume this is talking about pure gasoline. The stuff that you get out of the pump is anything but pure. It contains benzene, hexanes, and other really nasty chemicals that will kill you quickly and slowly (e.g. cancer)

  • SoonaPaana@lemmy.world
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    9 months ago

    This is a very very cool graphic. Really highlights that MSG is needlessly antagonized. Also so weird to see sarin and nicotine next to each other.

    Marketing is a bitch.

      • Tar_Alcaran@sh.itjust.works
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        9 months ago

        Exactly. Gasoline, for example, is remarkably non-toxic, but it will cause instant chemical burns to your throat and lungs, possibly killing you far below the (chemically) lethal dose.

        Methanol will turn you blind at a quarter of the listed dose, and those two are just from the top of my head.

      • neo@feddit.de
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        9 months ago

        I wonder how they came up with the LD50 of all those materials, like THC and LSD. Is this based on theoretical calculation, in vitro tests, or on a (assumably) very small sample of known deaths?

        • yetAnotherUser@feddit.de
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          9 months ago

          Step 1: Feed/Inject mutliple rat populations with different concentrations
          Step 2: See how many die.
          Step 3: The concentration which causes 50% of the population to die is the LD50

          • neo@feddit.de
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            9 months ago

            While I was thinking you were yet another user, you were a rat the whole time! Wait, we are all rats!

            Jokes aside, animal testing as a data source seems reasonable to me. Thanks

      • flying_sheep@lemmy.ml
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        9 months ago

        Or aspects like arsenic staying in your body a very long time, or the fact that LSD is psychoactive in microgram doses, so you’d need thousands of tabs to die.