this post was submitted on 25 Feb 2024
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Yeah, I don't buy this shit at all.
How many people die each year from acetaminophen overdoses? Versus how many die from THC?
This whole infographic is a crock of shit
You're confusing 50% lethal dose (medical property of a substance in relation to the body) with death rate (property of a death cause, obtained statistically from a population at a specific time). This is pure medical data which still may be slightly inaccurate, but you can easily check relevant scientific papers for their estimate of the LD₅₀. I think all values presented here are correct within a factor of 2, unless you find a reputable journal stating a very different result. Each substance is available in different concentrations and humans’ exposure to them also varies. You can get lots of pure water, sugar or gasoline easily but not a gram of viruses. Nobody would voluntarily consume a substantial amount of gasoline but nanograms of viruses come and go in the air all the time.
It is somewhat misleading to group poisons, radioactive isotopes and viruses as they work in very different ways, but the gist is correct. And yes, the LD₅₀ is still a statistical estimate dependent on the humans studied, but not on society etc. like the death rate.
Edit: some substances will be ejected by the body relatively fast (water), some bioaccumulate (heavy metals) and some "biomutiply" (viruses). This is why you haven't died despite having drunk lots of water.
Far as I can tell there aren't any viruses in there? There's a few bacterial toxins, but they're… well, toxins.
Also, the grouping isn't misleading. Not only is eg. plutonium fairly toxic (because it's a heavy metal) in addition to giving off ionizing radiation, but calculating an LD50 for something doesn't require it to be toxic, just that some dose of it kills. There's some µg/kg ingested (or inhaled or whatever) dose of polonium that will kill 50% of a study animal population dead, regardless of what the mechanism that kills them actually is
You are right, those aren't viruses. But you can imagine that a virus or prion (like botulinum) might have a very small LD₅₀. I discussed the radioactivity/toxicity in another comment, you are correct - but a tiny amount of any element can quickly kill you from decay radiation if it's a very unstable isotope.
And yes, if you understand what LD₅₀ means, the mechanism is the confusing part. Ingesting naturally occuring uranium will not kill you primarily from radiation despite the ☢️ symbol on the infographic, and vitamin D won't kill you if you only get it from the Sun. And I was primarily correcting the misunderstanding in the above critique, not defending everything about the picture.
For the THC though it would be grams of pure THC, not grams of weed
I legit cannot imagine consuming 1g of THC let alone 1g/kg, you'd literally be eating thousands of gummies if you're doing edibles (10mg seems to be the strongest edibles I can get) which would be really expensive, rough for a 70kg person would be nearly 9000 10mg gummies which are like $4 cad each, would cost $36,000.
I guess you could do it, but practically, no one is going to do that much
At that point just get a crack spoon, warm up some resin, and go to town on your veins. It'll be easier, quicker, cheaper, and probably won't make you want to die from consuming all that food.. You'll still die, just not because you stabbed yourself to relieve the bloating.
Exactly. just listened to something about the EU allowing a chemical during growing that stunts stalk length so plants are stiffer and lower to grouns for agriculture. US doeant allow it for agriculture but allows import of EU grain. Some articles trying to be alarmist state that urine analyais is ahowing increase in this chemical of people eating breakfast cereal. What the article left out (and podcaster calculated) was you would need to eat 85000kg of oats daily, to sustain a lethal dose.
It's probably all correct, but super misleading. There's probably no way to overdose on THC other than drinking loads of highly concentrated oil. Just like there's no way to overdose on LSD, since it gets taken smaller doses.
You consume grams of salt, milligrams of meth, vitamin D, …, and micrograms of acid.
So the important part is “how close is the usual dose people take to the lethal dose, and will your body rebel before you get there (e.g. it's hard to eat that much salt or drink much water)” or in other words “how likely is it to accidentally overdose”.
It's not "super misleading". It's just very simplified. It's an infographic, and inherently lacks nuance. The creator tried with loads of fine print both before and after the pictures, but who reads fine print, right?
The rest of your points are correct, especially the likelihood of accidental overdose. And the OP of this thread is… I'm gonna be generous and stay they are childish. Hopefully they learned something from all of the responses here
Most of the numbers used in this data are also extrapolated from studies using rats and mice so the direct applicability to humans is uncertain at best.
Keep in mind: a single extra strength Tylenol is 500mg. A standard dose for a headache is 2 pills, or 1000mg.
Weed gummies come in doses of 1mg to 100mg. 1mg is a microdose people might take for mild pain or stress, while 50+mg is a dose for cancer patients often take. A standard dose for occasional recreational highs is 5mg; they recommend first timers start at 2.5mg.
LD50 compares things by weight, rather than dose. By weight, THC is slightly more toxic than acetaminophen. But in terms of the number of therapeutic doses it takes to kill you, it's way, way safer.
Yes, I came here for this conversation. What's the ratio of effective dose to LD50 again, because that's typically what matters. That's where cannabis and ethanol are in totally different categories. And how high do you need to get before dying from LSD?
16.5 mg is 16500 μg. So a 70kg person would need over 1 million μg.
According to https://www.trippingly.net/lsd/the-lsd-dosage-guide, 25 μg is where visual effects start.
A deadly dose is around 800x higher than that. You wouldn't be as high as a kite. You'd be as high as Voyager one.
The data about LSD lethality in humans is sparse at best it seems: https://www.healthline.com/health/substance-use/can-you-overdose-on-lsd#risk-of-death
That dose of 16.5mg/kg ld50 is for rats.
Mice is lower at 0.3mg/kg.
There have been no know deaths from humans overdosing on lsd, even when people have taken ridiculously high amounts by mistaking it for cocaine and railing lines of it up their nose.
Sure, a little coma, hypERthermia and light gastric bleeding but nothing a short stint in the hospital didn't sort em out with no lasting effects.
I think the reason this chart doesn't feel right is because for substances we regularly ingest, a more useful scale would be the ratio of the lethal dose to the effective dose, since we use a different mg amount to get high on THC than we use to lower pain on acetaminophen
This is why grapefruit is so dangerous for so many medicines. Those medicines take bioavailability into account and can be a massive dose in some cases. Grapefruit keeps the same mechanism that lowers effective dosage busy, substantially increasing the effective dose - straight into overdose territory in some cases.
Aye, I've always liked the ratio better. It really puts into perspective how fast and loose some of our entertainments are. Compare the health warnings on OTC drugs like tylenol/acetaminophen/paracetamol to the bare minimum labeling of alcohol, yet alcohol's equivalent (or much less, in some estimations) to the painkiller.
Death rate is society-dependent. If we only paid with lead coins and never washed our hands, cases of lead poisoning would skyrocket even if the element and our bodies remained the same (and so would LD₅₀). Thankfully, our society knows about the danger and limits the intake of lead to small amounts and/or small concentrations.
You should work on reading comprehension.
Where does it say anything about mortality rates?
It shows lethal doses.
You need to consider that a typical dose of acetaminophen is much higher than a typical dose of thc.
This list is about lethality, not death counts.
The fact that your completely misunderstanding ass got upvoted so hard really shows that people are pretty fast to be pretty stupid.