Tuesday, April 9, 2013

DANGER! DANGER, WILL ROBINSON!

EVERYTHING in medicine comes with a little packet of paper that tells you what it is, what it's for, how dangerous it is, and how to handle emergencies it might cause.

Bizarrely enough, this includes the most common liquid on planet Earth: water.

Yes water.

And this is the actual warning label that comes with water:



So, as per the last paragraphs, let's keep these important points in mind:

1.  If you accidentally get water in your eyes, IMMEDIATELY flush them with more water for 15 minutes.

2. If you accidentally drink water, induce vomiting.

3. If you get water on your skin, wash it off with soap and water.

4. If the water catches fire, extinguish it immediately with something "appropriate."

5. And always call poison control if you drink water! It says so!

Thank you, Webhill!

26 comments:

Anonymous said...

You are confused. This is not a data sheet for humans. It is a data sheet for those aliens in that movie Signs by M. Night Shyamalan.

Anonymous said...

Congress should ban this poisonous dihydrous monoxide substance! It causes burns, is a large component in cancerous tumors, and can cause drowning!

Kapitano said...

Years ago, Scientific American published the LD50 for water. Did someone commission a lab to feed enormous amounts of water to rats just to find out how much killed half of them?

Or did one lab tech just have nothing to do one day?

GPMommy said...

Never mind that you need a Rx to buy some (the sterile kind anyway...)

The Wicked Witch of the West said...

I'm melting!!!!!!!!!!!!

Maitri said...

Bahaha, that is hilarious! Avoiding the sue-happy at its finest.

Anonymous said...

Aka "homeopathic heroin."

bunkywise said...

That just makes me want to slap someone. Or maybe that's just the mood I am in...or it could be "age onset crabbiness"...or I could just be slap-happy. HAHAHA. (Sorry.)

OldSquid said...

What’s funny is this is such a thing as water intoxication. Whenever someone goes on how dangerous vaccines are like yesterday when someone posted a meme on facebook about all the drugs you have to call poison control if you take too many of them I remind them of this. Remember the chemistry saying “the dose makes the poison”. Another favorite of mine is to remind people that o2 is toxic in high doses.

bobbie said...

Your tax dollars at work...

Just Me said...

Thanks for the huge laugh. I almost spat this highly dangerous substance all over my keyboard

Anonymous said...

That's not a data sheet. That's a dare. I dare you to light water on fire.

Anonymous said...

As a chemist, we are required to have a MSDS (data sheet) for every chemical in the lab. We have thousands of these (typically 5 page documents). All of them are about as useful as this one, but somehow it makes us safer to have these sheets. Sand is another funny one to read. The beach is very dangerous with both sand and water.

Anonymous said...

Drink a liter of WFI. I dare ya.
Sterile Water for Injection, USP is a hemolytic agent due to its hypotonicity.

Patti Cadwallader said...

Another quote from Lost In Space..."Oh the pain.....the pain...." (Dr. Zackery Smith)

Anonymous said...

I wonder: if I skipped my next doctor's appointment and explained that it was because I got into the shower and was stuck in there for days, what with rinsing my eyes out with water for a never-ending series of 15-minute cycles and constantly having to re-soap myself to wash the water off my skin, until my roommate finally called the fire department to drag me out of there and get all the water off my skin and out of my eyes, do you think she'd start a blog?

Anonymous said...

I finally understand why there s an expiration date on my bottle of Poland Spring--it is a truly dangerous substance!

Loren Pechtel said...

I went looking for the source of the LD50 data and so far I'm coming up empty-handed beyond the 90g/kg (rat) value.

I did find a much more extensive MSDS sheet for it, though. It doesn't have the exposure howlers but there are some others:

http://www.sciencelab.com/msds.php?msdsId=9927321

Melting Point: Not available.

(I suspect this is a glitch caused by a zero value being interpreted as no data.)

Personal Protection: Safety glasses. Lab coat.

Anonymous said...

Like Anon at 4:13 said, in the lab we have to have MSDS sheets for everything. My favourite was the one for a brick.
We use deionized water for our experiments, and one of the lab techs used to drink it. We had to explain that deionized water is bad for you.

Charles said...

Actually, I am surprised that they leave out the most important warning of all - never use water on your gizmo. That will cause it to multiply and turn into gremlins that will run terror all over your town.

LabMama said...

I had to write a MSDS for fetal bovine serum once. Surprisingly difficult to do.

Unknown said...

Why did the warning label neglect the drowning risk? These things really should be regulated more strictly.

Peter B said...

That MSDS should be taken seriously. Never consume water without diluting it to a safe concentration; the best diluent is ethanol.

Anonymous said...

You have seen the site for dihydrogen monoxide, yes? DHMO? http://www.dhmo.org/

Ducky said...

If this was a facebook post, I would "like" it instantly. Best post ever. lol.

Hal Dall, MD said...

On April 1, some radio guys got into deep do for using the DHMO idea.http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2013/04/02/florida-water-prank/2046639/

 
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