Gasoline fume detection

The hazard is aspiration pneumonia. This is not poisoning in the sense of a toxin that must accumulate in some dose. It is essentially a mechanical interference, not biochemical toxicity. Thus the similarity to water drowning: you can suffocate in hydrocarbon vapor, or liquid water, neither of which need be interfering on a chemical level with oxygen transport, just presenting a mechanical barrier the prevents air from reaching the alveoli.

Hydrocarbons are worse than water in effects like interfering with surfactant behavior in the lung tissue. Again, this works as an immediate physical problem from a sudden large aspiration, not a "poisoning" in the sense of small doses via vapor that can accumulate over long periods into a biochemical lethality.

All of which is absolutely irrelevant to the point under discussion, which is that you made the false and dangerous claim that gasoline hydrocarbons are "harmless" and safe to drink.

-- Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?

I stand by what I said. The hazard is in sudden aspiration of a significant quantity causing pneumonia. Not by swallowing into the stomach, nor in inhaling minor vapor concentrations into the lungs. Suffocation from high-concentration vapors is possible, but this is due to oxygen displacement and not poisoning.

Gasoline is dangerous, but not the way most people think. They see "harmful or fatal if swallowed" and wrongly assume it acts like, say, methanol, to poison biochemically via the bloodstream.

Nobody disputed that anyway: everyone knows that inhaling gasoline is harmful.

Unfortunately you haven't yet figured out that swallowing it is, too.

-- Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?

Sez you.

My, what a witty retort. I haven't heard that one since, maybe, fourth grade.

It's pretty apparent, given your absurd claims, that you haven't figured that out yet. You _explicitly_stated_ that gasoline hydrocarbons were safe to drink, remember? That's how this argument started: you wrote that gasoline hydrocarbons were "pretty harmless" and that they could even be drunk, and I said that's bullshit. It was then, and it still is.

-- Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?

Tell you what, you just keep drinking gasoline for lunch, and the rest of us won't. that should work out well for everyone.

oh, and stop smoking.

Yes, and I cited a leading medical authority (Merck Manual) explaining that the hazard is aspiration pneumonia incidental to swallowing, not the swallowing per se. You are free to cite otherwise.

Better yet, offer me money. I will drink a hydrocarbon.

You provided a citation showing that aspiration of gasoline hydrocarbons is dangerous (which nobody disuputes), *not* a citation showing that drinking them is safe.

Any MSDS for those hydrocarbons will show otherwise.

No, thank you. I'd prefer not to have the consequences on my conscience. I'd be satisfied if you simply dropped this stupid claim.

-- Doug Miller (alphageek at milmac dot com)

How come we choose from just two people to run for president and 50 for Miss America?