I see you are saying that sodium fluoride (NaF) will kill you if you pick up the wrong rock at GGG's Kvanefjeld and lick your fingers.On the contrary, you will live.
You also dismissed my comparison with the NaF in toothpaste by saying that the level is 1 ppm. It is not. Have a look at the Wiki entry on toothpaste.
Under 'Fluorides' it says that the toothpaste sold in the United States has 1,000 to 1,100 ppm fluoride. In some European countries a NaF content of 1,450 ppm fluoride is common. In fact my tube of toothpaste, bought from Aldi, has that higher quantity.
Let's integrate the subjects of toothpaste and rock at Kvanefjeld by looking at some simple maths.
1. Suppose I put one gram of 1,000 ppm NaF toothpaste onto my toothbrush. How much NaF am I putting into my mouth?
The equation for converting ppm to milligrams, for a quantity that is in a given number of grams, is:(1000 ppm x 1g) / 1000 = 1 mg of NaF put into my mouth.
2.Suppose I have picked up a 'wrong rock' at Kvanefjeld and it leaves 0.15 g of residue on my fingers (that is approximately the quantity of a crushed pill of paracetamol on my fingers).
If the rock contains that higher level you quote - 50,000 ppm of NaF - then the equation is:(50,000 ppm x 0.15g) / 1000 = 7.5 mg of NaF.
Assuming I lick only one finger, then I would be putting 1.5 mg of NaF into my mouth.
So - if I cleaned my teeth twice a day then I would be putting more NaF into my mouth than if I licked a finger after picking up a wrong rock.Of course I spit out most of my toothpaste, so I am assuming the person picking up the wrong rock has a taste and then spits it out. But what about the worst case - they taste the rock and swallow 1.5 mg of NaF, or lick all five fingers and swallow 7.5 mg. Could that licking kill you, as you say it would.
For a 70 kg adult human the dose is in the range of 5000 to 10000 mg. So the fatal dose is between 667 and 1,333 times more than what you would get from licking all five fingers and swallowing the residue.
A responsible message for a Kvanefjeld rock handler would seem to be 'don't panic if you have licked your fingers'.
I'll stop my long-winded analysis here, but I thought it was necessary to examine closely the remarks you made, which are damaging to GGG.
Oh, and by the way, I agree there was an NaF tragedy in Iceland, due to volcanic eruption - but Greenland has no volcanoes.
GGG Price at posting:
13.0¢ Sentiment: Buy Disclosure: Held
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