The Livermore scientists do offer a cautionary note in their report, which recommends that hospitals be made aware of the possible consequences of such a chemical reaction occurring in their emergency rooms. But there was another possible murderer considered: an owl. Andresen measured their concentrations and then piped the vapors into the mass spectrometer chamber, which fires electrons at the chemicals. 1186 Lynnhaven Pkwy, Virginia Beach, VA 23452. The medical staff injected her with diazepam, midazolam, and lorazepam to sedate her. When absorbed into the body, dimethyl sulfate causes convulsions, delirium, paralysis, coma, and delayed damage to the kidneys, liver, and heart. She wanted someone to look at the case more closely, and in her opinion Livermore was the only laboratory involved without a vested interest. About 10 for 9 P.M, Ramirez was pronounced dead from kidney failure related to cancer. On April 20, 1994ten weeks after her deathRamirez was buried at Olivewood Memorial Park in Riverside. Order Pick-Up; Pure Leaf Iced Tea . Like many other chemicals, dimethyl sulfate has a good side and a bad side. Here are the details about the mystery of Gloria Ramirez and all the pandemonium that ensued. Jeannie, George, and four of the children escaped. Dimethyl sulfone is a molecule composed of one sulfur atom, two carbons, six hydrogens, and two oxygens. Social media has allowed people from around the world to connect and share ideas on bizarre occurrences that have puzzled investigators. They also noticed an oily sheen on her chest and a fruity, garlic-like odor which they thought was coming from her mouth. According to an August report on the Riverside incident by Tam Smalstig, an industrial hygienist with Californias Department of Industrial Relations, the Riverside Coroners Office had told the department, without elaborating, that Ramirezs body had indications consistent with phencyclidine use. DMSO2 is known to crystallize at room temperature, and crystals were observed in some of Ramirez's drawn blood. There was immediate speculation that Marks drank menthol intentionally, perhaps driven by depression over the desolate polar environment. Suddenly, one of the attending nurses started to faint. Outside, in the parking lot, hospital staff were treating patients and ill colleagues under the dull orange glow of sulfur lamps. Next Andresen analyzed the samples using a high-powered tool known as a computer-guided combined gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer. The investigation into her death, Hill said, was finished. $1299 ($0.72/Count) Save more with Subscribe & Save. In January of 1959, ten college students decided to go on a hiking trip in the Ural Mountains of the Soviet Union. Other scientists are more convinced that action is necessary. It would seem to me that it would take a hell of a lot of DMSO, but in that stage of fighting for her life, Ramirez may have really overloaded on it, he says. Find Out About the Gaurs. The standard model is the name given in the 1970s to a theory of fundamental particles and how they interact. A nurse, Sally Balderas, who went back inside to help shift Ramirez into the isolation room started retching and felt a burning sensation on her skin. She was extremely confused and was suffering from tachycardia and CheyneStokes respiration. [2], She passed the tube to Julie Gorchynski, a medical resident, who noticed manila-colored particles floating in the blood. Of the 20 types of symptoms reported by the staff, from the fainting to the convulsions to Gorchynskis hepatitis, only one nausea and vomiting is not a symptom of dimethyl sulfate exposure. Now the Livermore team needed to figure out the next step: how the relatively harmless dimethyl sulfone could have been converted to the extraordinarily harmful dimethyl sulfate. Thousands of Cuban scientists and officials investigated the case at the time and the country denied any involvement with a potential attack, but many people remain unconvinced. By this time Gorchynski had filed a lawsuit against Riverside General Hospital, the coroners office, and several others, seeking $6 million in damages. He also sought medical attention immediately, which made a suicide attempt even more unlikely. Others developed breathing problems and one nurse experienced paralysis - and no one knew why. One was missing a tongue. This woman, the paramedics reported, was 31 years old and had cervical cancer. At 12:30 a.m. Jeannnie answered a phone call from a woman who claimed to have a wrong number. Manila paper is buff-colored and the fibers of the paper are usually visible to the naked eye. They stripped off her shirt and pressed padded electrodes against her chest; at that point several people saw an oily sheen covering Ramirezs body, and some noticed a fruity, garlicky odor that they thought was coming from her mouth. It was one of those deals that was pretty fortuitous, Grant says. Adapted from Sheng, 2017. An investigation by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory proposed that Ramirez had been self-administering dimethyl sulfoxide as a treatment for pain, which converted into dimethyl sulfate, an extremely poisonous and highly carcinogenic alkylating agent, via a series of chemical reactions in the emergency department. [2] Sold in gel form at hardware stores, it could also explain the greasy appearance of Ramirez's body. Her blood smelled like ammonia and there were manila-colored particles floating in her blood. But in the past decade, as the production of nuclear weapons has tapered off, Livermore and its fellow labs have attempted to find an identity better suited to a post- cold war world. An emergency room entrance. In court, three experts backed the possibility that an owl had attacked her and caused a deadly fall down the stairs. The Livermore chemists envision a reaction which hasnt yet been observed in which some of the molecules of dimethyl sulfone in Ramirezs blood broke apart. YouTubeGloria Ramirez, before her 1994 death. When it became clear that Ramirez was responding poorly to treatment, the staff tried to defibrillate her heart; at that point several people saw an oily sheen covering Ramirez's body, and some noticed a fruity, garlic-like odor that they thought was coming from her mouth. They dissolved the compound in a transparent liquid called Ringers solution, which is basically all the ingredients of blood minus red blood cells. The clothes of whoever could have been exposed were removed into plastic bags. Andresen corrected him, saying the spike was dimethyl sulfone. Im a nuclear chemist, and my organic chemistry knowledge truthfully is minuscule, he says. They conducted an experiment to see how much dimethyl sulfone could accumulate in the blood at normal body temperature. On the same page of the index he had been reading, he found the answer: dimethyl sulfate. Several microscopic owl feathers were found in Kathleens hair. Save up to 70% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine. In DMSO2 form, it is known to crystallize at room temperature, which could explain the manila-colored crystals the blood that was drawn from her body (at 98.6 0F) and into the syringe (at room temperature, 64 0F). Whatever the true reason, Overtoun Bridge now has signs installed warning owners to keep their pets on leashes during their walks. Rodney Marks was a 32-year-old astrophysicist doing research for the University of Chicago. The tan-ish color of the envelope is known as Buff or un-dyed. Andresen laid out a paper with the gas chromatography-mass spectrometry results, a graph with spikes similar to earthquake readings on a seismograph, and pointed at the dimethyl sulfone peak. Livermore Labs postulated that Ramirez had been using dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), a solvent used as a powerful degreaser, as a home remedy for pain. Her death was ruled an accidental drowning. At 1:00 a.m., she heard an object hit the roof and roll but she went back to sleep. As if the situation wasnt strange enough already, suddenly, one after the other, nurses in the room started to faint. Lam appeared to be hiding from someone in the hallway or potentially suffering a mental crisis of some kind. The team was supposed to come back by February 12th, and a search party of their classmates and teachers were sent out to look for them on the 20th. But in Ramirezs blood and tissues there was a hefty concentration of tens of micrograms per milliliter, about three times higher than the codeine in the samples. Colored Particles. These are all professional emergency room workers. Manila is most commonly used for making file folders[1] and envelopes, called Manila folders and Manila envelopes, respectively. Several organic chemists have scoffed at the step-by-step change of DMSO into airborne dimethyl sulfate. The most severe case required two weeks of hospitalization. Strange orange orbs were sighted by other nearby hikers around the time of the incident that some believe could have been a type of bomb. Some fashion schools and people in the fashion industry use large rolls of Manila to create finalised clothing patterns. As if the situation wasn't strange enough already, suddenly, one after the other, nurses in the room started to faint. Overall, 23 people became ill and five were hospitalized. For now, researchers cant find a similar poisoning in the medical annals, nor can they say whether hospitals should fret about future cases. A Woman Had Carried a Baby in Her Womb for 46 Years and Then Gave Birth to a Stone baby, 18 Unbelievable Facts That Sound Completely Fake Part 2, 10 Facts About Artificial Intelligence Thatll Leave You with Mixed Feelings, Two Decades Ago Their Rescuing Hug Stunned The World And Revolutionised Medicine, 10 Most Horrifying Torture Methods In All of History, Sexsomnia The Sleeping Disorder that Makes You Have Sex While Youre Asleep, What Are These Massive Super-Cows? The ropes were made from abac or Musa textilis, which is grown in the Philippines;[3] hence the association with Manila, its capital city. The nurse who replaced her noted that Gloria's blood contained manila-colored particles. Andresen suspected that the headspace would be a likely retreat for a noxious gas particularly in the container holding the bile, a yellowish secretion of the liver, where poisons often concentrate. Sign up for our email newsletter for the latest science news, Want More? The evidence at the scene was strange from the beginning. She fainted after handing the syringe to a medical resident, Julie Gorchynski, and was taken out of the room. They continued on and found three more bodies in the snow. Personal removed her immediately, but a few moments later Dr. Gorchynski felt ill. It is manufactured as an industrial solvent, but it is also sometimes produced naturally in our bodies from amino acids that contain sulfur. If Andresens team is right, one has to wonder whether the outbreak was unique. At this point, Kane fainted and was removed from the room. It reported that a ten-minute exposure to half a gram of dimethyl sulfate dispersed in a cubic meter of air can kill a person. All the emergency room patients were ordered to move to the parking lot. Gluons are also colored . In 1994, a man threw his own son from the bridge under the belief that the child was the devil, further adding to Overtouns dark reputation. Complaining that she was lightheaded, she left the trauma room and sat at a nurse's desk. The second communication gave supplemental support for the postulated chemical scenario as well as insight into some of the sociology and vested interests inherent in the case.[specify]. Image Source: brantford It is true, he notes, that no one has done experiments to show that dimethyl sulfate is produced when dimethyl sulfone breaks apart and recombines with the bodys sulfates. This is where we were afraid we might find a showstopper that would kill the theory, says Grant. Ramirezs seemingly average life took its unusual turn on Feb. 19, 1994, when she was taken to General Hospital in Riverside, Calif. after she experienced a rapid heart rate, a drop in blood pressure, and was unable to form coherent sentences. 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The incident was initially considered to be a case of mass hysteria. The stuff is like tear gas, says Jack de la Torre, a physiologist and professor of neurosurgery at the University of New Mexico. How Effective Are Colonoscopies at Detecting Colon Cancer? I remember hearing someone scream, Welch says. The warning is that the human body can be a place where bizarre and potentially deadly chemistry can occur. Some people believed he may have poisoned himself accidentally by attempting to home-brew alcohol, but this theory was quickly disproved by the fact that the station had a well-stocked bar available. Meanwhile, back in trauma one, Welch became the third to succumb. In one, Ramirez spread a cream on her skin that contained phencyclidine (better known as PCP, or angel dust) dissolved in a DMSO carrier base (a common way to take the drug). Rather, the Livermore team thought the more likely event was that Ramirez had rubbed DMSO on herself to relieve the pain from her cancer. The match between the symptoms experienced by the hospital staff and the symptoms of dimethyl sulfate exposure was uncanny. But dimethyl sulfone itself couldnt knock out an emergency room, so when Andresen flew to Riverside on April 12 to brief the coroner, his conclusion was that he had found nothing that looked like a poison. Test with samples. 30 Pack Project File Folders with 1/3 Cut Tab, Letter Size Colored File Folders, Manila File Notes Folders, Decorative Project Folders for School, Home, Office Supplies, 9.5 x 11.5 Inches 4.5 (43) $1599 $18.99 Save more with Subscribe & Save FREE delivery on $25 shipped by Amazon. In early October, when the Livermore scientists took up the Ramirez case again, they first had to decide whether her body could have generated the dimethyl sulfate. Marc Micozzi, director of the National Museum of Health and Medicine in Washington, D.C., is one. At 8:50p.m., after 45 minutes of CPR and defibrillation, Ramirez was pronounced dead from kidney failure related to her cancer. The nurse who drew the blood quickly fainted, and soon two other people in the room passed out. A second investigation from Livermore National Laboratory came to a different conclusion. The team would also check for any gases that may have vented off the samples into the headspace, the pocket of air separating the samples from the tops of their containers. One of the most interesting theories is that Rivera was dropped through the roof of the hotel by a helicopter, possibly because of his work cleaning up the public image of his childhood friend Porter Stansberry. You will need to use the method Player.spawnParticle which takes the full set of available . Andresen asked Grant, his deputy director, to sift through the file. The Toxic Lady The conclusion: The hospital staff most likely experienced an outbreak of mass sociogenic illness, perhaps triggered by an odor. That Andresen had found evidence of dimethyl sulfone in Ramirezs blood and organs pointed to her having first been exposed to DMSO. The only thing unusual about her was her age, recalls Maureen Welch, a respiratory therapist who was assisting in the trauma room that night. A total of 23 staff became sick after exposure, and 5 were hospitalized. Ochoa and three others repeatedly administered electric shocks and drugs, but their efforts to stabilize Ramirez failed. Acoustic or sonic weapons have been in development since at least the 1990s and certain types have been used around the world to disperse crowds and protesters. Grant decided to find out more about DMSO and dimethyl sulfone, so when he got back to Livermore he looked up the two compounds in the Merck Index, a chemists bible that describes the characteristics of more than 10,000 chemicals, drugs, and biological substances. In chemistry little changes can sometimes lead to big results. Nevertheless, according to Grant and other chemists, some fraction will still vaporize at room temperature. Its a really clever piece of detective work, says Oregon State toxicologist Frank Dost. Now they were under the gun to finish a technical report to the organization paying their bills the U.S. Department of Energy, Livermores parent agency by September 30. (Although dimethyl sulfate has been tested as a nerve gas, it has apparently never been manufactured for use in war.). Warning: "continue" targeting switch is equivalent to "break".Did you mean to use "continue 2"? Weve never said this is what happened, just that people should look into it. Over a period of two years, various staff reported hearing loss, nausea, and memory loss connected to these sounds. Balderas endured bouts of apnea during a ten-day hospitalization. It takes a really damn potent toxin to do all that, says Sheldon Wagner, a clinical toxicologist at Oregon State University. Thus this process could have produced the crystals that had been observed in the syringe in the hospital, particularly since emergency rooms tend to be cooler than most rooms about 66 degrees. Manila paper is a relatively inexpensive type of paper, generally made through a less-refined process than other types of paper, and is typically made from semi-bleached wood fibers. As if the situation wasnt strange enough already, suddenly, one to! Room temperature the Toxic Lady the conclusion: the hospital staff most likely an! Be hiding from someone in the room started to faint ) Save more with Subscribe & amp ; Save 's... 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