User talk:Hap Remodeler

I would like to comment on my removal of the reference to the Marx JOMS paper. I have not removed the reference itself because, frankly, I don't know how. I am a trained chemist with a PhD from a major California university. Elemental white phosphorus is comprised of four P atoms arranged in high-energy tetrahedrons. It does not react with water. In fact, it reacts so vigorously with oxygen that it is commonly stored under water. It does not react with carbon dioxide. The reaction of white phosphorus and ample oxygen, for example air, produces the substance which is identified incorrectly in the deleted entry and in the Marx article as white phosphorus but which is in fact P4O10, commonly known as "phosphorus pentoxide" and written as P2O5. This substance does react vigorously with water to produce polyphosphoric acids and phosphoric acid.

Even more importantly, the phosphonates, organophosphorus acids where the phosphorus atom in the +5 oxidation state is bonded to a carbon atom, are not synthesized in higher animals. The highest life forms discovered thus far that are capable of synthesizing the carbon phosphorus bond are certain marine invertebrates found in certain hydrothermal vents on the ocean floor.

The suggestion that some mysterious reaction between white phosphorus, water, and an amino acid could produce an analog of one of the bisphosphonate drugs and thus be associated with phossy jaw just as the drugs are associated with the modern equivalent, bisphosphonate-associated osteonecrosis of the jaw, has no basis in the reality of the reactivity of P4 and simply could not happen under the conditions of exposure to the fumes and smoke from the element. That osteonecrosis of the jaw represents a modern reappearance of the 19th century phossy jaw is beyond any doubt, but the mechanism proposed by Marx and deleted by me from the Wiki article, is not an explanation.

Hap Remodeler MD PhD (talk) 20:03, 9 May 2009 (UTC)