The Pharmaceutical Journal Vol 267 No 7162 p274
25 August 2001

This article
Reprint
Photocopy

Highlighting hazard
The path to bulimia
“Soft incense hangs upon the boughs”

Highlighting hazard

I have long believed that pharmacists, who necessarily have to undergo training in the safe handling of potentially dangerous chemicals, are probably the only professionals in society who really appreciate how to deal with them. This means that when it comes to supplying chemicals to scientists and others who need them in their investigations, they stand in a class by themselves. They are not likely to be swayed by commercial considerations, the sort of thinking that leads to the three-for-the-price-of-two attitude that often makes a mockery of the supply of medicines to the public today.

The awareness of politicians that any rash release of chemicals into the marketplace is bound to bring a critical reaction from the guardians of public safety has resulted in a greatly restricted availability of some materials deemed essential to science teaching and the private pursuance of research. This caution restricts pharmaceutical suppliers of chemicals as much as anyone else.

I must admit that in my own college days we had a local pharmacy from which we were able to purchase most chemicals needed for analytical purposes, and were able to pursue our chemistry studies at home as well as in the college laboratory. The pharmacist in question was highly conscientious, and used to ask relevant questions to discover whether we knew precisely what we were doing, and what reactions we considered were involved.

In those innocent days I cannot remember that we ever had any trouble in the way of fires, explosions or poisoning. But times have changed and anything more dangerous than sodium bicarbonate can rarely be bought from our local pharmacy.

Lichenologists have long taken an interest in a group of chemical tests to determine the presence of certain lichen constituents relevant to identification. The reagents adopted include
p-phenylenediamine, potassium hydroxide, sodium hypochlorite and iodine, which produce colour changes in the presence of certain lichen metabolites, and are standard recommendations in the text books. According to Frank S. Dobson, writing in the summer issue of the British Lichen Society Bulletin, botanists are finding access to these chemicals increasingly difficult as control of such materials is tightened in what has, with much justification, been termed “the nanny state”. Dobson has found it necessary to resort to domestic bleach for hypochlorite, and caustic soda from a do-it-yourself store as a substitute for potassium hydroxide in making up the reagents. And when an acid is required to test for a calcareous lichen substrate, hydrochloric acid has to make way for lemon juice.

Admittedly, p-phenylenediamine comes into a more difficult category. I can remember when it was available from the Natural History Museum in London, failing other sources, but whether this still happens I do not know.

This compound needs very careful handling, since it is a weak carcinogen and may cause nasty reactions if it makes contact with skin. It is applied in ethanolic solution, recently prepared, and care is essential to avoid spillage or drying out of the solution to produce a fine powder that may be inhaled. However, there is no lack of warnings to lichenologists who use it for diagnosis; the literature is full of them.

Of course, as a pharmacist who has encountered much more hazardous compounds, I am not too complacent over the capability of biologists to use these reagents reasonably safely. Strange things sometimes occur in bio-laboratories that tend to raise the hair of a pharmacist. Nevertheless, I think a little more enlightenment of the makers of regulations is called for, in the interests of useful research.

Back to Top

The path to bulimia

The distressing condition of bulimia, in which insatiable overeating occurs, has been regarded as psychogenic or ascribable to neurological abnormalities such as a lesion of the hypothalamus. Researchers at the University of Pittsburgh, reported in the July issue of the American Journal of Psychiatry, have now drawn attention to the possible role of serotonin in conferring susceptibility of an individual to this strange disorder.

The investigators scanned the brains of nine women who had formerly suffered from bulimia but had been free from symptoms for several years, and also those of 12 healthy volunteers of similar age, using positron emission tomography with radioactive tracers. Serotonin is known to bind to fewer neuroreceptors as people advance in age, and this effect was confirmed in the healthy controls. However, the recovered bulimic patients failed to show any correlation between advancing age and binding of the receptor 5HT_2a to brain cells. These also showed a lower degree of binding of serotonin to the medial orbital frontal cortex, an area of the brain concerned with anxiety, depression and control of impulsive activity. The abnormal binding of 5HT_2a observed was found to be consistent with the intensity of problems affecting mood and obsessive behaviour which afflict persons who suffer from bulimia.

Whether abnormal serotonin binding to neuroreceptors actually induces bulimia or predisposes an individual towards its development later is a question so far unanswered.

Back to Top

“Soft incense hangs upon the boughs”

The habit of burning incense is today not uncommon in the domestic scene, and continues to be practised in temples and other places of meditation connected with many creeds. Some devotees of aromatherapy use variously perfumed joss sticks, and people who enjoy subtle perfumes as a means of inducing calm and helping sound sleep also burn them at times.

According to a comment in New Scientist for 4 August, the production of holy smoke may not be entirely devoid of risk. Investigations in Taiwan have indicated that in a badly ventilated temple carcinogenic polycyclic hydrocarbon concentrations may be 40 times higher than in a house where the inhabitants smoke tobacco. Air samples were collected from inside and outside a temple and compared with others from an adjoining traffic intersection. Concentrations inside the temple were 19 times higher than outside its walls and slightly higher than in the traffic zone. Temple air contained high concentrations of benzopyrene, 45 times as high as in homes of tobacco smokers and up to 118 times as high as in areas free from sources of combustion such as cooking fires.

Naturally, incense concentration is determined by the number of temple visitors who burn incense sticks there, but in major ceremonies many hundreds may smoulder simultaneously, causing seriously impaired visibility and raising concern for the health of workers who have to spend long periods in the smoky atmosphere. Suspended particulate pollutants may also present a hazard, since temple concentrations of them may be 11 times higher inside than outside its walls. A study of temple keepers’ urine may enable some estimate to be made of how much incense pollution actually reaches the lungs and is absorbed.

Back to Top