this post was submitted on 01 Jul 2024
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Do dogs frequently die from drinking oxalic acid, or was it more a figure of speech?
I'm not a scientist, but it's my understanding that when when you pour ethylene glycol antifreeze into a doggy bowl and let a doggy drink it, the doggie one way or another metabolizes it into oxalic acid and then dies like a dog, from kidney failure.
I'd personally hurt someone if I knew they did that.
I think it mostly happens on accident. Most people aren't scientists and so don't know that anti-freeze tastes good or what it does to little critters who like to lick it up, and so folks leave it sitting around and they create situations where it can be easily licked up. Every jug of anti-freeze made after 1980 has a novel printed on the back explaining about how you shouldn't let the nice critters lick up the anti-freeze, but no-one born after 1980 knows how to read a novel anymore.
I won't be gaslit into thinking anti-freeze tastes good. I'm fact checking this time. With my tongue.
This is also similar to the cause of one of the first heavily-documented medication-related disasters in the US, which led to the current FDA regulatory process. In 1935, the antibiotic sulfanilamide was discovered. It isn't very soluble in most things, so was typically manufactured as tablets. In 1937, S.E. Massangill's chief pharmacist and chemist announced raspberry-flavored elixir sulfanilamide, a syrup form of the antibiotic. It went through no testing for safety or efficacy.
The diethylene glycol (DEG) used to dissolve the sulfanilamide caused at least 100 people to have a far worse time than your happy bucket creature, on account of sudden, acute kidney failure due to the DEG being metabolized into oxalic acid.
I do agree with you that it's a cool chemical though (outside of the toxicity). Personally, I'd say that my favorite crystal might be iron pyrite. It can be used to spark a fire (like flint) and is showing some possible use as a semiconductor for photovoltaics. More than that, though, it forms two rather distinct and neat crystal shapes: cubes and pyritohedra (natural dodecahedra). And it's nice and shiny, while having fairly low monetary value.
Even if they had to do it to find out what happens and to make sure nobody else does it again?
Yes, no one escapes consequences.
What if a doggie did it? Would you abuse an animal?
They'd have a lot of explaining to do.