Death by Sodium NitrAte in news

[TimeToBiteTheDust]

Hey I was just looking for news about Sodium Nitrite as I do everyday but I found about a student that died after taking 100 times the safe dose of Sodium NitrAte. Just wanted to share it with you.

Student died in his room after consuming more than 100 times the safe amount of sodium nitrate, inquest hears

A STUDENT died after ingesting at least 100 times the safe amount of a food preservative and colour fixative for meats, an inquest heard.

www.dailyecho.co.uk

 

[snorli]

I suspect auto-correct is partially to blame for the nitrite/nitrate confusion.

 

[Roger]

This case has been mentioned on the forum before.

A distinction between nitrate and nitrate is made in the fourth paragraph of the newspaper report, so I'm not totally convinced the error lies with autocorrect. Maybe there wasn't an error - maybe he took both nitrite and nitrate; or maybe nitrates have metabolised into nitrates in the body.

100 x the lethal dose in body at time of post mortem, probably higher when ingested - well that sounds quite unbelievable frankly, even if the lethal dose was taken to be at the lower end of the lethality scale. Depending upon the body weight of the deceased, that's going to be in the region of 500gm/1 pound.

Now that the Coroner's inquest has been concluded we are unlikely to hear any more about this case, so the questions which arise in our minds are not going to be answered, and frankly there is little point in speculating beyond noting that both sodium nitrate and nitrate are potentially lethal and act in a similar manner, though much larger doses of nitrate are required to produce the desired outcome.