• Question: What is the most toxic substance that you know?

    Asked by Matterforn to Ben, Lizzie, Francis, Max, Sian on 5 Mar 2018.
    • Photo: Sian Richardson

      Sian Richardson answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      It may not be the most toxic substance but I work with botulinum toxin which is an extremely potent neurotoxin (a grain of sand worth of this toxin is more than enough to kill a human). It is produced by a bacteria Clostridium botulinum. Therefore to work with this toxin require special ways of working, so we don’t become exposed to the toxin. When the toxin is diluted (thousands of fold dilution) then it can be used in therapeutic in order to treat muscular diseases.

    • Photo: Francis Man

      Francis Man answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      I think that the botulinum toxin that Sian talked about is one of the most toxic poisons that we know, and the most toxic I can think about.

    • Photo: Lizzie Wright

      Lizzie Wright answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      I once worked in a lab investigating Parkinson’s Disease. We had a chemical called MPTP that we used that would cause Parkinson’s-like symptoms so we could investigate it. No-one was allowed to work with it alone in case you accidentally got it on your skin and you had to wear full protective clothing – we had an antidote that had to be administered within 30 mins if you did spill it, so pretty scary!

    • Photo: Ben Mulhearn

      Ben Mulhearn answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      Sometimes when treating patients with autoimmune diseases (ones where the person’s own immune system goes wrong and attacks their own cells) we use pretty toxic substances. Some of these, such as cyclophosphamide and methotrexate, are so toxic that they are even used in the treatment of cancer, and needed to handled with extreme care.

    • Photo: Max Jamilly

      Max Jamilly answered on 6 Mar 2018:

      I work every day with lots of substances designed to ‘stain’ DNA: they attach to DNA in the cells that we study so that we can see them more easily under the microscope, or in other kinds of analysis. But these chemicals can attach to your own DNA as well and cause cancer – so we need to be very careful to protect ourselves!

    • Photo: anon

      anon answered on 7 Mar 2018:

      I also work with chemicals like Max mentioned. As well as these I also work with antibiotics which I use to select for my desired genes when I clone them into bacteria and these are carcinogenic (cancer causing). I also work with a neurotoxin called acrylamide which can be very dangerous if swallowed or inhaled.

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