Talk:Propionitrile

Correct formulae?
I've also seen ethyl cyanide listed as CH3CH2CN. &mdash; RJH (talk) 16:24, 18 January 2007 (UTC)
 * It's the sum formula which doesn't account for structure - AFAIK the Hill system is standard in Wikipedia. The structure can be seen in the picture. Icek 18:18, 24 July 2007 (UTC)

Disputed
I find this article hard to follow. I doubt it was written by someone with advanced chemistry knowledge. Seems like it was written by a victim of the chemical plant explosion (i.e. slightly biased against the chemical).

I think the part about its synthesis should be made more clear. Why does it's catalytic production from nickel result in a "high pressure" explosion? Aren't all explosions generally "high pressure"?

Also, what causes people who are exposed to propionitrile to turn yellow and vomit yellow bile? Metabolism to HCN in the liver? And what is the source for the carcinogen claim? I can't find it anywhere. Through which pathway would propionitrile be carcinogenic (if it were)? Unless someone can find a source for the cancer claim we should remove the statement. JohnnyTopQuark (talk) 21:37, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

I also haven't found any evidence that ethyl cyanide was even produced at that plant, much less released during the explosion/fire. Not to mention there were several different chemicals released during that incident; how do we know ethyl cyanide was the cause of the injuries? I am starting to doubt this whole thing more and more. Can anyone else find this info? JohnnyTopQuark (talk) 21:54, 12 February 2010 (UTC)


 * I've made some changes to the article based on your suggestions. I have removed the unsourced statement about yellow color changes and replaced the carcinogen claim with a referenced statement about teratogenicity. Let me know what you think.  -- Ed (Edgar181) 22:30, 12 February 2010 (UTC)

Questionable Rdr to the article
At C3H5N i found this content:

The molecular formula C3H5N may refer to:


 * Propionitrile (propanenitrile)
 * Propargylamine (2-propynylamine)

C3H5N The first problem with it is that Disambiguation pages exist solely to disambiguate names of existing articles, and there is no ambiguity (in our sense) when there are not at least actual 2 articles "eligible" for the name. C3H5N can perhaps be a Rdr to Propionitrile, but there is every reason to believe it can't be a Dab until another relevant article is written, at least as a stub. The second problem is that nearly all occurrences of "Propargylamine" in WP suggest that it is a class of drugs, not a single compound. (I was not making any effort to see if there is even one other occurrence that suggests that 2-propynylamine is a propargylamine -- let alone that other n-propynylamines are not propargylamines.)  It's tempting to take heart from the fact that e.g. Chemical Book has information on it, tempered by the fact that no other page in WP mentions "propynylamine", so that a competent org-chem editor would be part of any positive solution. It ain't me, babe, so i'm applying a radical surgical solution to the problem, and leaving this account of the fact in the most relevant place that occurs to me. My hopefully temporary negative solution is to make C3H5N a Rdr to Propanenitrile, on the assumption that that is the only species of C3H5N on which we presently have any info to offer. --Jerzy•t 22:36, 24 July 2011 (UTC)
 * Oh, the editor who made it a Dab used an IP address that was fairly active, but used only between something like '04 and '08. --Jerzy•t 22:52, 24 July 2011 (UTC)

Change to LD50 in article body
The article contains the statement − emphasis mine − "Propanenitrile is only weakly toxic with an LD50 of 230 mg/kg (rats, oral)."

In the sidepane it says the LD50 is "39 mg kg−1 (oral, rat)". I checked PubChem for NIOSH toxicity data, and the entries there agree with the sidepane.

It is a bit concerning that we had a stated toxicity 6-fold under the (presumably) accepted value. At more than a quarter as toxic (orally) as potassium cyanide, and readily absorbed via skin contact, it is a very nasty substance and not one we should want the reader to underestimate, especially given the mention of antidepressant and appetite suppressant properties.

I've updated the article and amended the references accordingly. (I've also changed the name in this section to be consistent with the rest of the article.)

I checked the reference used to obtain the old value − Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry − and would consider it a perfectly proper one generally; it really is an extraordinarily comprehensive collection. Unfortunately in this case it was a 20 year old edition, using toxicology data from ~20 years prior to that for its sources.

Peskydan (talk) 02:00, 7 January 2023 (UTC)
 * Ullmann's encyclopedia say 230 mg/kg. I trust an encyclopedia written by PhD's who specialize in making nitriles vs a govt site which is highly unlikely to be written by an expert.--Smokefoot (talk) 02:36, 7 January 2023 (UTC)