Draw the point
★ Most paraquat poisoners will wake up to death in a painful process.
★ Although paraquat poisoning has been successfully rescued, it is too much luck.
Someone was poisoned with paraquat and sent to the rescue...
Figureworm creative
This kind of heart-wrenching news happens several times a year. How terrible is paraquat poisoning? In addition to the extremely high mortality rate and no antidote, its effect is not rapid, but the pain it brings is not light, some people describe it as "a slow burial alive", and some people bluntly say that "drinking paraquat is that you have enough time to regret it, but you have almost no chance to survive". So why is paraquat poisoning so terrible? Is drinking paraquat really not saved? Today we will talk about this topic.
01
As a herbicide, paraquat is truly dedicated
Let's start with paraquat, many pesticide names are straightforward and easy to understand, like what "enemy insects", "grass net", etc., a listen to know what it is for, paraquat is the same, a sound is a powerful herbicide, and it can be said to be deserved.
Paraquat (PQ), which efficiently destroys chloroplasts and terminates photosynthesis, killing weeds. After paraquat spraying, weeds can be seen turning yellow within 2-3 hours and the onset of action is very rapid.
Paraquat is also relatively rain-tolerant and does not delay spraying when it rains. In addition, paraquat, although notorious, is actually quite environmentally friendly, and once it comes into contact with the soil, it will quickly passivate and fail under the action of metal ions, and will not pollute the soil. It is no wonder that it is loved by farmers and widely used.
However, such a good herbicide can be said to have been completely banned in China, precisely because of its toxicity to people.
02
Paraquat is too toxic for people
Undiluted paraquat water agents are mostly 20% solutions, and the vast majority of patients who drink paraquat on impulse drink this medicine. This concentration of paraquat is taken orally in lethal doses of 5-15 ml. The image is a little bit, we usually drink liquor with the kind of small wine cup, about a cup is about 5ml, 1-3 cups of paraquat have life worries. Adults usually drink water, and at least 30ml are taken in one sip. So picking up paraquat and grunting on a gas head is a big mouthful, or tons of tons and tons of tons and tons of drinking, and it is very difficult to rescue.
Such a small tube has 15ml of | Figureworm creative
As mentioned earlier, unlike many highly toxic substances that are sticky and dead, paraquat does not work quickly, and many patients who drink paraquat and have just been sent to the outpatient emergency will only have some mucosal damage at the beginning, and even smile as usual. However, patients will soon develop lung lesions such as pulmonary edema, bleeding, and those who ingest large doses of paraquat often die of acute respiratory distress syndrome within 1-3 days. The small dose intake will often occur in pulmonary fibrosis within 1-2 weeks, which will seriously affect the gas exchange function of the lungs, and finally the patient will die of respiratory failure very painfully.
Paraquat mainly harms the lungs, but in addition to the lungs, paraquat can also damage almost all systems of the human body, many poisoned people will also have severe liver and kidney damage, and severe patients will also die of multi-organ failure.
What is worse is that paraquat is so toxic to people, but there is no specific antidote, can only be through emetic, adsorption, blood perfusion and other ways to remove paraquat in the body as much as possible, and the use of a large number of glucocorticoids and other symptomatic treatment, and careful care of patients, to seize a little life, some patients even need to transplant lungs.
In short, once paraquat is drunk, it is really dangerous. Therefore, instead of doing everything in the hospital to snatch people from the hands of the grim reaper, it is better to simply let people not drink - this idea is correct, but unfortunately it is very difficult to operate.
03
Keep people away from paraquat, how can it be so hard
Let's start with the efforts of paraquat manufacturers.
In order to avoid the masses from taking paraquat by mistake, the manufacturer added dark green dyes and odorants to the paraquat water agent, and also added an emetic agent, which made people feel uncomfortable when they saw and smelled, and they would spit it out when they drank it. Unfortunately, for people who are dizzy, this is not very useful.
After that, there were manufacturers who developed the colloid paraquat, which took a long time to dissolve when used, and the manufacturers felt that this would avoid suicide by drinking medicine with passion, but there were still people who calmly prepared paraquat solution and then took poison...
In addition, paraquat, even when used normally, can cause poisoning through the skin or respiratory tract if not protected.
Considering that paraquat is extremely toxic to humans and is easy to obtain as a pesticide, in order to protect the safety of people's lives, China has successively introduced a series of measures to restrict the production and use of paraquat. Among them, the two most recent and important times are the ban on the sale and use of paraquat in China on July 1, 2016, and the prohibition of the sale and use of paraquat gum in China from September 26, 2020, at which point paraquat officially withdraws in China.
From Weibo
So the question is, the ban is banned, but why can we still see the news of paraquat poisoning in recent months in 2022?
The reason may be that paraquat works so well that some unscrupulous businesses will take advantage of the loophole to add paraquat to other pesticides or directly skin paraquat for sale, in addition to paraquat that may still be in stock. However, with the standardization of management, I believe that such incidents will definitely become less and less in the future.
Having said so many heavy topics, let's finally hope. Although paraquat is very toxic to people, the poisoned people are not completely lifeless, in fact, there are cases of successful rescue after drinking paraquat, but it takes a lot of luck. Based on an analysis of 26 successfully treated patients with lethal doses of paraquat poisoning, the researchers found that patients had a chance of being rescued if they were young and strong, drank fewer drugs, induced vomiting in a timely manner, and were properly treated. Therefore, once there is a case of oral paraquat, it should be sent to the hospital quickly, and the slightest opportunity for rescue should not be abandoned.
Author | Ding Song
Audit | Wang Qian, chief physician of the Emergency Department of the Third Medical Center of the General Hospital of the People's Liberation Army
Editor-in-charge | Ding Song
This article is produced by "Scientific Debunking" (ID: Science_Facts), please indicate the source when reprinting.
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