Talk:Resiniferatoxin

Untitled
Any thoughts of making a plain words translation for us mortals? 75.177.131.250 (talk) 04:16, 17 February 2008 (UTC)

Needs serious attention
This article is barely useful as it stands. I encountered it in passing and corrected a statement more or less cribbed form the chemical hazard sheet, but even after a bit of rewording I am not impressed. "Animal experiments indicate that in humans ingestion of 40g or more may be fatal or cause serious damage to health" As a toxicity warning, that suggests a hazard about on a par with table salt! Does anyone have any more useful information? JonRichfield (talk) 11:19, 16 July 2013 (UTC)

It's also incorrect, even when you take the information straight from the MSDS. According to the MSDS, it can be fatal if someone ingests LESS THAN 40g. I think that's worth an edit, and I'm changing it.Subjugator (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 23:33, 12 June 2014 (UTC)

It seems to me to be a power of 10 mistake, how much "less than 40g"? 184.4.3.32 (talk) 00:56, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

The datasheet this page links to indicates the lethal dose is much less than 40g. 94.142.238.91 (talk) 11:41, 8 September 2015 (UTC)thegoodhen

I don't know that I have really ever encountered the real LD50 of resiniferatoxin, but it's a bit absurd to say it's 10g even if it is. It's not all that orally active and it doesn't really kill you very easily since it's extremely specific for one type of neuron (the pain sensing neurons, which are more or less dispensible for survival). I guess for me it was funny to read 10g because 10g is a ridiculously large amount of this stuff. Enough to kill all the pain sensing neurons in a small town. For pain control it has been injected by the MICROgram (1/1,000,000th of a gram) which was enough to reduce pain in dogs with cancer. Probably killed a good number of their nociceptors. Toxins that kill you in gram amounts are not very potent. A gram is the size of a thumbnail for most compounds. RTX is insanely potent in microscopic amounts, it's just not very likely to kill you -- but much less than a microgram in your eye or on your tongue is guaranteed to make you experience some serious SERIOUS pain, which is probably what the plant that makes it was going for evolutionarily. It really deserves a disclaimer. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2601:142:0:40:2121:F84:7B7C:60D5 (talk) 03:36, 7 February 2016 (UTC)

Inconsistent?
The article at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scoville_scale claims a rating of 15 billion Scoville, while this article states 16 billion. Which is correct? BlackVegetable (talk) 20:36, 23 January 2015 (UTC)

It doesn't really matter. The scoville scale is hugely inaccurate/unscientific and it's unlikely that people actually tested RTX directly. It's probably some kind of estimation based on comparing the relative potency with capsaicin. They're probably assuming it's about 500-1000x more than whatever capsaicin is.

Scoville scale
I removed content about the scoville scale rating in these diffs. The information was not reliably sourced here. I looked and there is a lot of crap, unsourced information out there on the internet. Where did the 16M number come from? We need a reliable source before we put that back in. Jytdog (talk) 06:25, 23 January 2016 (UTC)

Dosing in Toxicity Section
The toxicity section lists a dose in grams immediately after a rat LD50 in mg/kg. The source attached is not specific to RTX and only lays out how to estimate LD50 in humans from values for other animals. The dose therefore must be a mg/kg value multiplied by some body weight in kg which is not stated. Either adding what body weight is used or simply stating the estimated LD50 in mg/kg would be better.  pedanticLoser 🗯️ 22:37, 4 January 2023 (UTC)


 * I removed the paragraph on human toxicity. Same issues, even adding "in an average adult" would be better than an uncontextualized dosage in grams.  pedanticLoser 🗯️ 18:45, 12 April 2023 (UTC)