Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The World's Most Dangerous Substances

Starting point is 00:00:00 There are a great many chemicals that are dangerous to work with, things that you wouldn't want to get on your skin or somehow ingest. However, there is a category beyond that of substances that are so dangerous that many chemists wouldn't want to work with them under any circumstances. Things that are so dangerous that even the smallest air could result in a disaster in the laboratory. Learn more about the most dangerous substances in the world on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Do you ever climb into bed ready to sleep, only to have your mind start ready to be? the moment your head hits the pillow? Thoughts bouncing around, replaying the day or jumping ahead to tomorrow? That is exactly why Catherine Nikolai created Nothing Much Happens. Each episode is a gentle, cozy bedtime story where, well, nothing much happens. No drama, no tension, nothing you need to

Starting point is 00:00:59 follow closely. Just soft narration, calming repetition, and soothing sensory details designed to help your mind slow down and your body relax. It's not about entertainment, it's about rest. And millions of listeners around the world use it every night to quiet their thoughts and finally fall asleep. If you've ever struggled to shut your brain off at night, this might be exactly what you've been missing. You can listen to Nothing Much Happens wherever you get your podcasts. Episodes are every Monday and Thursday. The list of dangerous substances is a long one. It includes everything from the most toxic nerve gases to things you might encounter in a walk in the woods. It would be impossible to have a comprehensive list of such substances. So in this episode, I want to focus on

Starting point is 00:01:46 the worst of the worst. Not just things that are deadly, but things that are notorious to work with. And I'll start with the substance, which has the distinction of being the strongest acid known to science. Fluoroantimonic acid. Floroantimonic acid is considered a super acid, meaning it's stronger than 100% sulfuric acid. However, calling it a super acid is a bit of an understatement. Floroantimonic acid has a chemical symbol of H-Sb-F-6. meaning it consists of one hydrogen atom, one antimony atom, and six fluorine atoms. It's created by a mixture of hydrofluoric acid and antimony pentafluoride. It's so acidic that it doesn't even make sense to measure it on the pH scale,

Starting point is 00:02:31 which measures acids in an aquaous solution. The Hammett acidity function gives fluorosantymotic acid a value of negative 21, whereas sulfuric acid is negative 12. Fluoroantimonic acid is approximately 20 quintillion times stronger than sulfuric acid. Fluoroantimonic acid will burn through almost every organic compound and is so strong that it can even react with glass and is used in glass etchings, which means that you can't store it in normal laboratory test tubes. The only substance where you can store fluoroantimonic acid is Teflon. Floroantimonic acid is a colorless liquid, and needless to say,

Starting point is 00:03:12 breathing its vapor is deadly. It's used in helping chemical reactions. It's also used to etch glass, enhance the quality of gasoline by raising octane levels, making plastics, and engineering explosives like grenades. The chemical which is considered the most toxic on a gram-for-gram basis is di-methyl-cadmium. Dymethyl-cadmium is extremely poisonous, with a lethal dose consisting of only a few millions of a gram. It's also extremely volatile and can easily burst into flame. It's in a class of similar organometallic compound such as dimethyl mercury and dimethyl zinc, all of which are extremely toxic and volatile. These chemicals are so bad that most chemists won't even bother to work with them because the risks are so great.

Starting point is 00:03:57 If even a small amount should become airborne, it can lead to death. And if it doesn't kill you instantly, it will probably cause long-term complications and probably even cancer. The next dangerous substance is one that's considered the most unstable substance, and hence the most explosive substance. Azide-A-Zide. The chemical symbol for azide-A-Zide-A-Zide is C2N-14. If you know a little bit about chemistry, you might have noticed that that's a lot of nitrogen atoms.

Starting point is 00:04:28 There are a bunch of them strung together in such a way that they are barely holding on to each other. As such, even the slightest shock or movement will cause it to explode. It's so unstable that even trying to take measurements of it of any kind is almost impossible. Researchers who tried to get an infrared spectrum of the substance couldn't because hitting it with a weak laser beam caused it to explode. It's not produced commercially and there's no known use for the chemical. And even if there was a use for it, there would be no practical way to use it, given how unstable it is. Dangerousness isn't always measured by the ability

Starting point is 00:05:03 of a substance to kill or destroy. In 1889, in Freiburg, Germany, the chemist Albert Landenberg made an accidental discovery that everyone around him knew about almost immediately. In his laboratory, he created thioacetone, the world's smelliest substance. In the process of trying to distill it, an area with a radius of a half mile around his laboratory, or 750 meters, was struck with a smell so bad that it caused vomiting, nausea, and unconsciousness. In 1967, researchers at the ESO Petroleum Company were working with thioacetone when they had a minor mishap. They reported what happened next. Quote, recently we found ourselves with an odor problem beyond our worst expectations.

Starting point is 00:05:48 During early experiments, a stopper jumped from a bottle of residues, and although replaced at once, resulted in immediate complaint of nausea and sickness from colleagues working in a building 200 yards, 180 meters away. Two of our chemists who had done no more than investigate the cracking of minute amounts of tri-thi-acetone found themselves the object of, hostile stares in a restaurant and suffered the humiliation of having a waitress spray the area around them with a deodorant. End quote. It isn't just the smell of thioacetone that's noteworthy, but how little of it is required and how fast the spell seems to spread. One of the most famous deadly chemicals is potassium cyanide, or as it's commonly called, just plain old cyanide.

Starting point is 00:06:35 Potassium cyanide is a white solid salt that looks at first glance like sugar. Potassium cyanide, unlike many of the other substances I've mentioned, actually does have industrial uses. It was used in wet plate film photography to make images stable and no longer sensitive to light, and it's also used in gold mining to process gold from raw ore. It also happens to be extremely poisonous. Ingesting it could lead to death in just a few minutes. It was the preferred method of suicide by many top Nazi leaders, including Eva Brown, Joseph Goebbels, and Heinrich Himmler. Herman Garing had a hidden capsule of potassium cyanide that he used to kill himself while he was awaiting execution.

Starting point is 00:07:15 The mass suicide in Jonestown, Guyana, was done with potassium cyanide. Potassium cyanide results in the body being unable to use the oxygen found in red blood cells, so you basically asphyxiate internally. Another poison that has been used in assassinations is polonium 210. Polonium 210 is a radioactive isotope of the element of polonium. It is a very strong alpha-admitter that is a half-life of 138 days. If you remember back to my episode on radiation, there are two things you need to remember. The first is that alpha radiation is generally not a problem and it's pretty easy to block.

Starting point is 00:07:52 A sheet of paper, clothing, dead skin cells, and even the air can block alpha radiation. However, it can be extremely dangerous if you ingest it. And the second fact is that the shorter the half-life of something is, the more radio-act. active it is. In the case of polonium 210, both of these things come together to make it a tool for assassinations. Pollonium is a very rare element. There isn't just a lot of polonium sitting around. Moreover, because of its very short half-life, polonium 210 has to be created in a nuclear reactor, rather recently, for it to be of any use. Former KGB agent Alexander Litvinenko was killed via polonium-210 poisoning in London in 2006.

Starting point is 00:08:36 A small amount of it was put into his tea, which he drank. Once ingested, it's impossible to stop, and there is no antidote because it's radioactive. It isn't a matter of neutralizing a chemical. From an assassin's point of view, it's relatively safe to handle, unlike a nerve agent. It also leaves a telltale signature. Polonium 210 is impossible for regular people to get, as it can't just be synthesized in a laboratory. It requires a nuclear reactor.

Starting point is 00:09:03 So it is a poison that is deadly, but also sends a message. Speaking of nerve agents, they are some of the deadliest chemicals ever known to exist, and they were created just for that purpose. Nerve agents are a class of highly toxic chemical compounds that disrupt the functioning of the nervous system. Seren gas is a compound that many people might have heard of. It's 26 times more deadly than potassium cyanide. Sarin was developed in 1938 in Germany in an attempt to create pesticides. While both sides manufactured sarong gas during the Cold War,

Starting point is 00:09:36 the only known military uses of it were by Saddam Hussein and the Iraqi army in 1988. It was used against Kurdish rebels and against Iranian soldiers during the Iran-Iraq War. There have been other cases of Sarin being used for assassinations and attacks on individuals as well. As bad as Sarin is, it isn't even close to being the worst nerve agent. VX, short for Venomous Agent X, was developed in 1952 in Britain and is colorless and odorless. Unlike other nerve agents, it doesn't decompose quickly after exposure to the atmosphere. The UN determined that Cuban forces used VX gas against rebels in Angola in the 1980s. Saddam Hussein tried to develop VX gas but was unable to manufacture it.

Starting point is 00:10:19 A Japanese religious cult known as Ayum Shinrico used sereng gas in a terrorist attack in 1995 and managed to synthesize several hundred grams of VX, which were used to assassinate one of the members they thought was a spy. In 2017, Kim Jong-nam, half-brother of the North Korean leader Kim Jong-un, was killed at the Kuala Lumpur airport using VX applied to his face. However, VX isn't the worst. Soviet chemist created a class of nerve agents known as Novichok, which are believed to be five to eight times more deadly than VX.

Starting point is 00:10:53 The only known uses of it have been in assassination attempts, in particular former Russian army officer Sergei Skirpal and Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny. I'll close with the substances which are considered to be the most deadly substances known to humanity. Botulinum toxins. Unlike pretty much everything else I've mentioned in this episode, botulinum toxins are not man-made. They're found naturally and are created by the bacteria that cause botulism. There are seven known types of botulinum toxins, which are named A through G. A lethal dose can be as small as 1.3 nanograms, or a billionth of a gram. Every other substance I've mentioned is either heavily controlled or worked with under very strict laboratory conditions because they're so dangerous.

Starting point is 00:11:44 Botulanim toxins, however, are actually used in medical procedures. If you've ever heard of a Botox injection, well, Botox is nothing more than a nice-sounding name for botulinum toxin A, the world's most deadliest substance. Botox injections are designed to paralyze the muscles at the point at which it is injected. It's often used as a treatment for muscle conditions where a muscle may have involuntary spasms. However, it is most commonly used as a cosmetic treatment to get rid of wrinkles. If botulinem toxins are so dangerous, why don't Botox injections kill you? It's because they are so incredibly diluted that they only have an effect in the localized area of the injection.

Starting point is 00:12:27 That being said, there can be side effects from Botox, and there have been reported cases of people being killed. So this is one of those things where you should most definitely seek the advice of a doctor before you get treatment. What I've listed here are just a few of the truly horrible chemicals that exist. Thankfully, you don't really have to worry about any of them. They're so dangerous that they're usually only manufactured in small and amounts if they are manufactured at all. And I, of course, didn't mention the one substance that kills more people than every other combined, dihydrogen monoxide. I will have to leave the discussion of that deadly chemical for a future episode. The executive producer of Everything

Starting point is 00:13:10 Everywhere Daily is Charles Daniel. The associate producers are Thor Thompson and Peter Bennett. Today's review comes from listener JP Bamabucks 22 over on Apple Podcasts in the United States. They write, Completionist Pass Requested. I found this podcast when searching for something about the Holo D'Amour and just kept going from there. Ten months later, I have finally finished. These bite-sized overviews of so many topics

Starting point is 00:13:34 makes it easy to learn new things every day. Please point me towards the Completionist Club location here in Alabama. I'm hoping it's near a lake, the beach, or Brian Denny Stadium. Roll tide. By the way, that brings up a great topic idea, college football stadiums. Thanks, JP. To find the hidden location of the Alabama Completionist Club,

Starting point is 00:13:53 you have to stand at the 50-yard line of Bryant-Denny Stadium at the exact moment of the winter solstice. And if there's a full moon, the light of the moon will shine through a gap in the statue of Bear Bryant, which will point you to the next step in the puzzle. And here's a hint. It probably involves breaking into Nick Saban's office.

Starting point is 00:14:10 Remember, if you leave a review or semi-abustogram, you two can have it read on the show. In that case, I challenge you to a battle of wits. For the princess? To the death, I accept. Good, then pour the wine. Inhale this, but do not touch. I smell nothing.

Starting point is 00:14:49 What you do not smell is called Iocaine powder. It is odorless, tasteless, dissolves instantly in liquid, and is among the more deadly poisons known to man. Hmm.

Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The World's Most Dangerous Substances

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