What are the poisonous things that can be seen everywhere every day?

Highly poisonous plants

In my country's Guangdong, Guangxi and Hainan provinces, there is a tree that is highly toxic. It is the "poison arrow tree". Once it enters the human body, it will cause damage to the human body's muscles. Relaxation, slowing of the heartbeat, and eventually death from cardiac arrest. Moreover, the poison of the blood-sealed throat tree occurs quickly, and it usually dies within 20 minutes to 2 hours after being poisoned. Therefore, it is also known as one of the "most poisonous trees in the world." Because the poison is so strong, people also call it "the tree that seals the throat when seeing blood."

But one thing can defeat another. Although the blood-sealed throat tree is highly toxic, the red-backed bamboo pole grass can detoxify the poison, and the red-backed bamboo pole grass is the only one that can detoxify the blood-sealed throat tree. plant.

In the past, local hunters would cut open trees with bloody throats, and then carefully apply highly toxic sap on their arrowheads to kill their prey. However, this kind of tree only appears in tropical virgin forests, and we will not easily come into contact with them in life.

The highly toxic things we are exposed to in life are actually not plants, but microorganisms, and these microorganisms usually lurk in the foods we are more familiar with.

Highly toxic microorganisms

Food poisoning incidents often occur around us. For example, a while ago, a mass poisoning caused by sour soup caused the death of all 9 people. The main culprit is that due to improper storage of sour soup, the microorganisms exceed the standard, especially Pseudomonas cocotoxin, which produces rice fermentation acid and causes food poisoning in people.

In fact, Pseudomonas cocotoxin is very common in food, especially fungus and tremella. This is because fungus and tremella are rich in nutrients and have a suitable environment, and people soak them before eating them. , and soaking for too long, such as overnight, will lead to the growth of microorganisms, leading to poisoning incidents.

However, under normal circumstances, Pseudomonas cocotoxin will not cause people to be poisoned. First of all, it is because it has high environmental requirements. Acidic environments and dry environments will cause their death. Even if the soaked fungus contains a small amount of Pseudomonas cocotoxin, there is no need to worry as it will not have an impact on the human body. But if the soaking time is too long, it will lead to poisoning.

In addition to Pseudomonas cocotoxin, Aspergillus flavus and Escherichia coli are also relatively common in life. However, as long as we are careful not to eat spoiled food and do not make homemade fermented food (especially rice and noodles) Food), in addition, it should be heated at high temperature when eating, generally it will not cause human body poisoning.

Mushrooms

It is said that people in Yunnan have a joke, which is that before eating mushrooms, you must be "three cooked": you must be familiar with the type of mushrooms, you must be familiar with the mushrooms, and you must be familiar with the way to the hospital. .

Every year when Yunnan mushrooms are put on the market in large quantities, there will be many poisoning incidents caused by eating wild mushrooms. Although many poisoning victims have mild symptoms, they just have hallucinations and see some scenes that they cannot usually see. , but many people have died from eating wild mushrooms.

Wild mushrooms are the collective name for local wild mushrooms in Yunnan, including both poisonous and non-toxic mushrooms. However, in pursuit of the taste of wild mushrooms, many locals pick them even though they know they are poisonous, thinking that they will be fine if they are cooked. However, there are many mushroom toxins that are not easily destroyed in high temperature environments, leading to food poisoning incidents.

From May to the end of July this year, 273 cases of wild fungus poisoning occurred in Yunnan Province, resulting in 12 deaths.

Poisons in life

In addition to food, the poisons we are exposed to daily include mercury thermometers. Mercury thermometers contain mercury, but they do not cause any harm to our bodies during daily use. Only when a mercury thermometer is broken will the mercury be released and harm humans, but the harm process is also relatively slow.

First of all, mercury will be absorbed by human skin, but the amount of absorption is limited, and the absorption of mercury by the human digestive tract is limited. In addition, the mercury content in the thermometer is very small, even if it is accidentally eaten, it will have an impact on the human body. It's not very big, and it will be excreted from the body in the feces within a dozen hours at most.

However, mercury will be absorbed by the alveoli, and mercury can evaporate at room temperature and turn into mercury vapor. This means that if the thermometer is broken, the mercury concentration in the indoor atmosphere will rise, causing damage to the human body. .

"Science and Technology Daily" published an article stating that if people are in an environment with an atmospheric mercury concentration of 1.2 to 8.5 mg/cubic meter, they will soon become poisoned. The mercury content in a mercury thermometer is about 0.5 grams. Generally, if it is broken, it will not cause serious mercury poisoning, as long as it is ventilated for a long time.

In fact, the harm of mercury to the human body is not instantaneous, but long-term. When mercury evaporates, the mercury vapor will float around along the atmospheric ocean currents, and some of it can even travel across the ocean to foreign countries. Afterwards, the mercury vapor will naturally settle and form compounds with other substances. Among them, mercury compounds: methylmercury will be absorbed by animals and plants, and gradually accumulate in the human body through the food chain, causing human diseases, such as Minamata disease in Japan.

Today, in order to better protect the environment, our country has banned the production of mercury thermometers, and has also proposed "mercury-free medical treatment" in the medical industry.

Summary

Although there are many highly toxic things in our lives, fortunately, not all poisons are accessible to us, and some poisons are poisonous but not As for killing people, or they can be recognized by people, for example: although Tremella fuciformis contaminated by Pseudomonas cocotoxin is poisonous, after being contaminated by microorganisms, Tremella fuciformis will become sticky and smell strange. More importantly, we can set the soaking time and try not to exceed 4 hours to avoid food poisoning.

So in daily life, we can effectively avoid these poisons. If we still accidentally cause poisoning, timely medical treatment has a high probability of saving lives.