Talk:Bromide

Not a chemical compound??
Why doesn't a class of compounds count as a compound? "Bromide" is both the name of the ion Br- (not a compound), AND the name of a class of chemical salts that ARE compounds. S B Harris 22:45, 15 January 2008 (UTC)


 * I think the idea is to include in wikiproject chemicals only articles about specific compounds, with chemical infoboxes, CAS numbers and so on (although the bromide ion does have a CAS number!). I don't really agree, but really, the exact wikiproject listed in the talk page (chemistry vs chemicals) is nothing to lose sleep about. :-) --Itub (talk) 09:38, 17 January 2008 (UTC)

Bread and processed foods?
What is it used for in food stuffs and breadmaking? I understand that iodine historically was used, which was good for you, but many commercial manufacturers switched to bromine in the last 20-30 years because it was cheaper. For what ingredients or processing? And doesn't it behave like fluoride to compete for iodine receptors in the body, which is an essential micronutrient? 66.178.144.154 (talk) 07:58, 18 April 2011 (UTC)

Salt Substitute
Although journal articles from 1949 describe deaths from the use of lithium chloride as a salt substitute, there appears to be no support (certainly not cited here) for the statement that lithium bromide was ever used as a salt substitute. I would remove this statement unless it can be verified. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.236.222.195 (talk) 10:34, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Indeed, a citation is missing here, however, see lithium bromide for a similiar cited statement. Plasmic Physics (talk) 11:05, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * Two wrongs do not make this right. It appears that the statement is at best half correct...lithium bromide may have "fallen into disfavor" as a sedative because the use of a different lithium salt (lithium chloride) as a table salt substitute resulted in tragedy. However there is no evidence that any bromide was ever used as a salt substitute. The statement should be corrected, and a proper citation provided, or removed. By the way, the entry for lithium chloride indirectly supports this assertion by properly citing the 'substitute salt cases' of 1949.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 83.236.222.195 (talk) 15:50, 13 September 2012 (UTC)
 * I never implied that two wrongs make this right, I appologise if it seemed so. I merely investigated your concern with mild interest, and found some relative information to help you. Do what you think is neccessary. Plasmic Physics (talk) 22:38, 13 September 2012 (UTC)

2014 Study - Bromine is an essential trace element
Yesterday I removed material from this article that was referenced to the 2014 research paper "Bromine Is an Essential Trace Element...." Since this left some gaps in the text, I put back what was there just before this material was added on 15 May 2014. One item I put back was "Bromine has no essential function in mammals," which was unsourced. My edits were commented with WP:MEDRS. These edits were reverted with the comment "Understand MEDRS, but radical excision of information should be discussed, and wholesale denial is without source."

So first a little background. A while back I started working on the article Composition of the human body, saw questionable health claims being made for various elements, and decided to look into how these things are decided. In the US, the FDA maintains a list of essential trace elements. They get their information from the National Research Council (United States) and the National Academy of Medicine. Both of those organizations review published researched and summarize their findings. Then I looked into the World Health Organization, the European Food Safety Authority, the (UK) Food Standards Agency, the National Health Service (England), Health Canada and a bunch of others. I just wanted to get a sense of whether scientists in the US are on the same page as the rest of the world.

What I learned is that the FDA's list is widely accepted. Another dozen or so trace elements are being looked at as possibly essential, some more seriously than others. For example, boron and nickel are high on everybody's list. In the UK they are legally defined as essential, even though their scientists say their essentiality has not been definitively established. In other words, there is a broad general agreement on which trace elements are higher or lower on the list. Bromine is not one of the stronger contenders. Meanwhile, the 2014 study seems impressive, but it doesn't seem to meet the standard of WP:MEDRS. The "radical excision" I made was only an excision of material directly dependent on that one source (the 2014 study), some in the lede, the rest in the Biology section.

As for "wholesale denial" of bromine's role in biology, I was just restoring that sentence to its state on 15 May 2014, the day it was changed to reflect the 2014 study. However, I now have two sources that may present a more balanced view on this:

"Only limited circumstantial evidence exists to support the essentiality of bromine. Before barbiturates were used, doctors prescribed bromide for sleep."

"Although a small amount of bromine is present as bromide in all living things and some species even produce organo-bromine compounds, no biological role has been identified for this element in humans. It has long been suggested that some bromide is essential to health, but this has not been proved."

Zyxwv99 (talk) 01:36, 2 July 2016 (UTC)


 * Thank you for your careful research. Please update the article accordingly. Grammar's Li'l Helper Talk 05:09, 2 July 2016 (UTC)

Reasons for deleting "Seawater Bromide" section
I found this section substantially short of Wikipedia standards in tone and content, and deleted it. My reasons include the following:
 * 1) It appears to have been written by a single anonymous author (apparently a student at Jacksonville University in Florida, USA who may also be known as EnSTRes) in two huge blocks of text who considers themselves an authority on the subject, offering unsubstantiated and uncited assertions in several places.
 * 2) Use of nontechnical/nonstandard terminology (AFAIK, there is no such thing as a "conservative" ion.)
 * 3) Factually false statements: Bromide does not react once dissolved in ocean water
 * 4) Judgement (qualitative) statements in place of specific (quantitative) statements that are largely opinion, and therefor not encyclopedic:
 * 5) * "In their famous article"
 * 6)  Speculative statements that are difficult to justify
 * 7) * "there are no encyclopaedic articles about seawater bromine in English even today."
 * There are, in fact, many peer-reviewed articles and papers which discuss bromine in seawater. googling "bromine in seawater" shows several.
 * 1) Opinion-based assertions: "X, the most authoritative encyclopaedia on marine science,...". According to who?
 * 2) Technically peculiar assertions: "Bromide can also be easily observed by mass spectrometry". Since bromide (in the ionic sense) CANNOT be differentiated from bromine by conventional  mass spectroscopy, I assume the intention is to discuss bromine atoms, so this belongs in a different article

In short, I removed the section not because it was all wrong, but because it wasn't up to the standards of wikipedia, nor the rest of the article.
 * I am happy to discuss this here if you want to go point-by-point.


 * Riventree (talk)