A Case Of Hydrogen Balloon Inhaling Gone Wrong

It is another day, and we will be discussing another medical case, but today's case is going as far back as October 1841 and published in 1908. The fact that this case has happened a long time ago doesn't mean people don't react the same way presently, the truth is human's react the same way now how they would have reacted to 100 years ago. So let's kick start this post.

This is an event that circles around a scientist (Mr. Brittan) that inhaled a gas he made in a balloon but for this post, while we will be looking at his case, we will be adding a little bit of other medical cases of the same cause seeing that we have improved in medicine.

This case started with emptying stomach contents which was forcefully projectile at first but became green in color as time went on. This wasn't the first time that he would be inhaling gasses in the laboratory, in fact, he would inhale gases and his voice would be so weakened or high. In his laboratory search, mixing some metal shaving with sulfuric acid would produce a gas known as Hydrogen which he collected in a balloon.

After inhaling the gas the first time, he felt light, and his voice was high pitched but he decided to inhale the second time and this was when he began to notice that he was sick. His vision started to turn dark, and he began to shake. At first it didn't look like something he should worry about since it was subtle but then he began to feel pain in his legs. The pains were severe that he could feel his heart beat in his legs but then another symptom was felt.

He began to notice tingling and numbness in his hands. I could imagine the fear in him but this was just the beginning of his nightmare. He was going to use the bathroom but noticed that his urine were trickling out with a deep red color. Before you begin to question why this chemist did this, The famous scientist in the 19th century, John Tyndall, reported that inhaling hydrogen gas produced a voice “so weakened as to become a mere squeak", so almost all scientist tried this out but from what we can see, Mr. Brittan might have probably inhaled something else, thinking it was hydrogen gas.

His heart rate increased, and stomach content became green-yellow and his voice was very weak. Like this was the end, his skin began to have a greenish-yellow color which was a symptom of jaundice, caused by bilirubin which makes feces brown. Since this was happening, it could only mean that his liver could be gradually becoming damaged. On an hourly basis, he would vomit and he stopped urinating. his face and abdominal region began to swell and become bloated as he began to store liquid in his body which should have been excreted as urine.

Soon he became anemic (low hemoglobin in his blood) and hemoglobin was responsible for carrying oxygen to the different part of the body, and when oxygen isn't going to the appropriate part of the body, such as the brain, it can begin to shutdown. Actually, Mr. Brittan was urinating hemoglobin with his urine and that was why it had the red color. It showed that both his kidney and liver were getting damaged but if this was inhaled, why was his lungs not having issues.

Inhaling the gas immediately gave the gas an avenue to reach his blood and had caused the hemoglobin in his blood to burst. While his jaundice disappeared and his vomiting episodes reduced, he was still bloated with no urine in his bladder. On the fifth day, he couldn't talk and was weak and died on the sixth day.

The metallic shave was checked and it was confirmed that it was contaminated with Arsenic which meant that while Mr Brittan thought he had inhaled hydrogen, he actually inhaled Arsine which was why he experienced those symptoms. Why we use up oxygen when we breath in, most of the air we take in isn't oxygen, it is majorly nitrogen and it is very light.

When combined with hydrogen, it would give ammonia but then, there are other compounds like nitrogen, they are phosphorus and arsenic. When phosphorus combines with hydrogen, it gives phosphine which is a poisonous gas, and arsenic can also combine with hydrogen to become Arsine.

Arsine weakens the globin chains holding heme together and breaks down heme causing it to float in the body thereby preventing oxygen to getting to different part of the body. Also, with the breakdown heme, iron is released which is very reactive in the body and can affect the kidneys causing oxidative damage and necrosis. If this case happened in our world today with medical improvement, we can be rest assured that the patient would survive as exchanged transfusion could have been done to removed the broken heme blood and given an blood without arsenic.

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Read More

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https://toxandhound.com/toxhound/ff-metal-hydrides/
https://archive.org/details/poisoningbyarsen00glaiuoft
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMcps1716775
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3070116/
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15563650701502675
https://academic.oup.com/toxsci/article/90/1/142/1692217?login=false
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJM199811053391901

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Image Credit

Image 1 || getarchive || An Emergency Medical Ambulance team
Image 2 || pressbooks || Structure of hemoglobin