Kitsch chemistry

[bunsen_h]

This evening on Torchwood: Miracle Day, I saw:

• A man poisoned with quick-acting arsenic powder.  The super-concentrated kind, y'know, where an amount of half a gram or so is a lethal dose for a large healthy man.
• The poisoner not attempting to hide the incriminating evidence, i.e. the extra capsule in her purse.
• The poison correctly identified by look-and-feel.
• A solution of EDTA cooked up in a teapot from materials and solutions found in an aircraft, such as degreasing fluid, catalyzed by a silver pendant.  Good ol' MacGyver stuff.
• The man, injected with a few mL of that solution, rapidly becoming healthy again.

Who do these people think they are — Star Trek?
 

Comments

[henrytroup.livejournal.com]

As far as I recall, arsenic is a rather bizarre poison with long-term effects.

[bunsen-h.livejournal.com]

Yes. It's primarily a heavy-metal-type poison, messing up liver function. The show was right in using chelation therapy, but grotesquely wrong in all the details.