Example of Toxic Materials

A Toxic Material is that substance that causes a Health Damage of the person who is in contact with her. It is also known as Poisonous substance.

It is commonly called Poison to any substance that when having access to the skin or to the interior of the human organism generates a Dangerous damage, which may not be remedied. If the Poison is ingested in large quantities, it causes death.

Contact with the toxic substance is called Exposition, and it may be a Slight Exposure or one Prolonged Exposure when talking about its duration.

Identification of Toxic Materials

In order for people to be prevented when encountering a Toxic Material, a signal called Pictogram, which is an image in a orange background, with the illustration of a human skull with two crossbones underneath.

The Pictogram must be attached on a sticker to the container of the toxic material, so that the danger is visible and thus disastrous incidents are prevented.

Effects of Toxic Materials

The damaging effects of Toxic Materials encompass a wide range of human ailments. The scale ranges from minor damage to

irritation of areas where the material has been, be it the eyes, the skin or even the internal organs.

Higher up the scale of damaging effects are wounds, skin corrosion and even internal tissue breakdown if the substance is ingested.

Most unpleasant effects are vomiting, dizziness, and disturbances in the digestive system like diarrhea. Even more serious are the effects of prolonged exposure, which are involved in cell function, thus originating the various types of cancer and mutations in some parts of the body, with complications such that they require from surgeries to amputations.

The most horrible characteristic of toxic materials is that they are capable of spoil quality of life of people who have had prolonged exposure, or simply kill them. It can be said that in the most fortunate cases the physical suffering is brief and the person dies in a short time.

The truth is that almost any substance is toxic, and Toxicity depends on the amount or dose in which it is incorporated into the body.

Examples of Toxic Materials

Potassium Cyanide (KCN): It is a colorless crystalline solid that is used to shine gold in jewelry. Very famous for being very soluble in water, and being one of the substances preferred by suicide bombers. The poet Manuel Acuña ingested it after leaving one of the most important pieces of his legacy: the poem “Nocturno a Rosario”.

Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN): It is a colorless and very poisonous liquid. It is detected by a smell of bitter almonds. It is very volatile, which leads it to mix with air, generating explosive solutions.

Hexavalent Chromium (Cr⁺⁶ in CrO₃): The element Chromium in its valence +6, also called Hexavalent Chromium, is in the form of oxide, which is illegally dumped by some industrial plants dedicated to electroplating. When the exposure is mild, it is irritating to the skin and eyes, and the digestive system. At high doses, it is a strong carcinogen and mutagen.

Elemental arsenic (As): This manifestation of Arsenic is found in the form of deposits at the bottom of aquifers that are about to run out. The last loads of water to be extracted are increasingly concentrated in Arsenic, and people in rural areas consume this water. The most serious consequences are that the metalloid is deposited in the human limbs, reaching the point of rendering them useless and requiring their amputation.

Lead Oxide (PbO₂): Lead Oxide is the way lead metal enters the body as a water pollutant. One of its detrimental effects is that it is deposited in the bones, replacing Calcium little by little. In addition, it decreases the IQ of children about to be born, since it affects their central nervous system.

Metallic cadmium (Cd): Cadmium can come as waste from metal coating factories, batteries, certain plastics, various pesticides, and metallurgical companies. It can cause damage to the digestive and renal systems in man; in the bones causes decalcification, damaging the bone marrow. If inhaled, its vapors cause severe lung damage.

Metallic mercury (Hg): Mercury comes as a residue from chemical industries that produce chlorine, manufacture of fungicides, fungus-proof paints, certain plastics, refineries and in the extraction of Gold and Silver with amalgams. It produces alterations of the intestinal mucosa, and in pregnant women it causes cellular damage that can cause genetic alterations, kidney damage and death.

Dioxins: Dioxins come from the degradation of polystyrene with microwaves. When food is cooked in the microwave oven in a microwave oven, the person will have available dioxins in the food. When ingested, these substances will cause sooner or later, if the habit of preparing food in this way remains, a definitive cancer.

Aspartame: Aspartame is an alternative sweetener, meaning it works to give certain foods and drinks a sweet taste in place of cane sugar. The problem with this sweetener is that it is carcinogenic when its consumption is too frequent.

Sodium Bisulfite (NaHSO₃): Sodium Bisulfite is a food preservative that intensifies acidic flavors. Only, like Aspartame, it is also carcinogenic.

Carbon Monoxide (CO): Carbon Monoxide is a gas that is released from incomplete or stoichiometrically insufficient combustion. When in contact with this gas, it enters the lungs and goes into the blood to bind with Hemoglobin, which is the substance in the body that is responsible for transporting oxygen to cells through the blood. Carbon monoxide, when binding to Hemoglobin, generates the Carboxy-Hemoglobin molecule, which causes drowsiness, and turns off the Central Nervous System until it causes death.

Ammonia (NH₃): Ammonia is a deadly substance. If it gets close to a person's breath, at a concentration of 5 parts per million or 5 milligrams in each liter of air, this substance will compress the lungs causing apnea terrible.

List with examples of Toxic Materials

1. Asbestos
2. Uranium (U)
3. Radius (Ra)
4. Tetrodotoxin
5. Muriatic Acid (HCl)
6. Caustic Soda (NaOH)
7. Caustic Potash (KOH)
8. Monosodium Glutamate ("MSG")
9. Chlorine gas (Cl₂)
10. Elemental fluorine (F₂)
11. Sulfuric Acid (H₂SW₄)
12. Sulfur Dioxide (SO₂)
13. Sulfur trioxide (SO₃)