http://www.cnn.com/2017/05/16/health/police-fentanyl-overdose-trnd/
A police officer in East Liverpool, Ohio, collapsed and was rushed to the hospital after he brushed fentanyl residue off his uniform, allowing the drug to enter his system through his hands. The officer had apparently encountered the opioid earlier in the day while making a drug bust.
"This is scary. He could have walked out of the building and left and he could have passed out while he was driving. You don't even know it's there on his clothes," East Liverpool Police Chief John Lane told CNN.
(Score: 4, Informative) by kaszz on Wednesday May 17 2017, @11:30AM (10 children)
Regarding potency: "Fentanyl is a potent opioid analgesic - a 25 µg per hour fentanyl patch equates to daily doses of oral morphine of upto 90 mg." says British MHRA and CHM. The Morphine minimum lethal dose is 200 mg as a comparison. A human eyelash hair has a weight of ~70 µg.
Fentanyl has a therapeutic index of 270. Which is the ratio between the effective and toxic dose, this means its "safe" provided medical monitoring is done. Intranasal fentanyl is available in doses of 50, 100, and 200 µg. Which may give a hint into what level that may affect a human.
The toxic side effect seems to be suppression of breathing which most likely explains why the person fainted. So while driving a car may be fatal. Falling down outdoors may be survivable provided the respiratory suppression don't go too deep. If the hands were sweaty or if the person breathed it in. An accident like this seems very probable. How penetrable the skin is to random dust is not really clear but as this substance is administered using skin patches it's not inconceivable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @03:22PM (3 children)
Of some interest? LSD doses were (40+ years ago...) claimed to be about 100 microgram, so in the same range?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:46PM
That's about right in terms of order of magnitude, although doses have dropped in recent decades:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysergic_acid_diethylamide#Dosage [wikipedia.org]
That is assuming that the dose is LSD at all and not one of the many lookalike chemicals (such as these [wikipedia.org]).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday May 17 2017, @06:02PM (1 child)
8 hours(*) times 25µg/h is 200µg so not quite as potent but almost, but further investigation is needed: i need to try both so that i can tell whether the results are comparable in magnitude (although obviously different in details). redoing the experiment several times with different dosages and making a graph out of them is probably a good idea too.
*) typical length of an lsd trip, i've heard
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday May 17 2017, @07:04PM
I think you have to consider biological half times too. In order to get the dosage comparison correct. I know that becomes hard math, but that's the way nature is shaped.
So a dose is delivered and the amount of active substance is then turned into half after x amount of time. Such that y amount of substance is active at a specific instance of time. If another dose is delivered then that is added on top of the first.
Morphine: half-life 2-3 h, bio-availability 20-40% (orally), 36-71% (rectally), 100% (IV/IM)
Fentanyl: half-life 10–20 min (T1/2 β) 2–4 h (T1/2 ɣ) Intranasal: 6.5 m Transdermal: 20–27 h Sublingual/buccal (single dose): 5.4–6.3 h, bio-availability 92% (transdermal) 89% (intranasal) 50% (buccal) 33% (ingestion)
Carfentanil: half-life 7.7 h, bio-availability --
LSD: half-life 3.6 h, bio-availability 71%
Potency:
Morphine: x1
Fentanyl: x100
Carfentanil: x10 000
LSD: Looking at minimum dose of 20 µg it seems on par with Fentanyl.
What is the reason to use LSD ? It can really mess up the mental state.
(Score: 3, Informative) by takyon on Wednesday May 17 2017, @04:58PM
(reply for you and AC)
LSD would appear to have a therapeutic index somewhere between 1,000 to 10,000, if I'm reading this [mangu.tv] right. 1,000 would be the conservative estimate. Cannabis is even higher [tumblr.com] (chart by NORML).
This page has a different index for fentanyl [wikipedia.org]:
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Wednesday May 17 2017, @08:42PM (4 children)
Sweaty back of the hand skin could take up 500ug from dust on the clothes, though it would seem unlikely to happen by complete accident - still, with enough cops busting enough drug dealers it doesn't have to be likely to happen...
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 18 2017, @08:16AM (3 children)
Accumulation below threshold and then just a small amount to tip the dose over into a effective one?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 18 2017, @11:51AM (2 children)
I agree with the skeptics here, most likely he "tried some" and got more than he should have - but... it's not inconceivable that the dosing was completely accidental.
As you say, the final push over the pass-out threshold could have been accidentally delivered with a brush of the hand on invisible residue - with a heavier dose given earlier some other way.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:06PM (1 child)
I'm thinking that the police got in touch with the substance for a long time during the work day, and then some fluke event took place. But I think the only way to really find out is likely to test if powder really can do this kind of accidental effect. Not that I think it will be done.. Maybe the police union might be interested as work related hazard?
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Thursday May 18 2017, @12:16PM
I don't doubt that it can be done - LSD and other skin-absorbable drugs can dose and overdose like that - the question might be: can it be done with a small accidental, hard to notice exposure, or do you have to basically bathe in it?
Also, powder in the air? Certainly easier to get into the bloodstream that way.
🌻🌻 [google.com]