There is something major league fishy about that pill analysis.
Either the 'chemist' is a complete and total idiot, and thought he could just buy the glycidate and go right to the Al/Hg amalgam reduction, not realizing it needs to undergo a base-mediated hydrolysis/rearrangement first, which gives the ketone (MDP2P), the glycidate is a solid whilst MDP2P is a mobile liquid.
Weird thing is, looks like he didn't try to go to the ketone, and tried to reduce the MDP2P glycidate without rearranging it to M2P2P and then added methamphetamine. Wonder if he realized that he'd made a colossal steaming turd of things and tried to shift the huge twatting mess he'd made anyway by chucking some meth in there.
Damn.Worst shit-covered failed coathanger-abortion I've EVER read. Jesus god, that is...there really are no words to describe what that is.As for the Al/Hg, that is just one more nail in it's coffin, another reason I'll be sticking to NaBH4, LAH, RED-Al etc, preforming imines from ketones, for making secondary/tertiary amines, or hydroxylamine (and mild base such as sodium acetate or potassium carbonate to deprotonate the hydroxylamine salt)to form an intermediate oxime and finally Boveault-Blanc reduction with sodium metal in anhydrous primary alcohol of low molecular weight for reduction of the ketoxime to the amine in the case of any compound having no functional groups incompatible with the conditions of the BB reduction.
Was very interesting, and alarming, to read of the fact that at least on the MDP2P glycidate, not that reaction of the glycidate is of use, its an intermediate to MDP2P, rather than a precursor that can be reduced to MDA/MDMA/MDE directly. But if its doing so in the use of the Al/Hg amalgam when used to reductively aminate MDP2P, P2P, or 1-phenyl-2-beta-nitropropene too, that is a VERY important finding, that must be passed on to certain chemistry forums, where this type of amalgam based reductant scheme and variants of it are frequently and widely used. (Me2)Hg, fucking shit, that is bad news. And it'll stir a shitstorm up at the places that I have in mind for certain members to be made aware of it and pass on the message.
Got the full details of the lab analysis and what techniques were used, their explanations etc.? because the more info from the primary sources I have the better the citation and the stronger the evidence against the Al/Hg.
Would be interested if the poster who sent in the sample could ask the testers for the technical details of the analysis (specifically, type of analytical instrument, be it GC-MS, LC-MS, UV-VIS, NMR, FT-IR, fourier-transform ion cyclotron resonance spectroscopy or whatever else.)
Also if a mass spec technique was used, what carrier gas was used, what the flow rate is, what type of ion source was employed, type of detector, whether the ionization source was running in positive or negative mode, excitation energy, and the raw GC trace and mass spec data, relative to which internal standard was used)
Because I want to see whether the organomercury compound was found present in both a mass spec type analysis of some kind AND a second non-ionizing, non high-temperature analytical technology was used, and if so whether it was found in both, in order to rule out a volatile Hg source like mercuric chloride, aka corrosive sublimate, which easily enters the vapor phase, being the Hg species present in the sample before injection into the GC-MS, and then subsequent radical generation and combination of alkyl radical molecular ions with Hg ions, to generate the organomercury species found as an artifact of analysis due to reactions taking place within the oven of the GC-MS and ionization source. Its important for this to be asked of the testers and the data known, the extent of the danger worked out. Because the toxicity of mercury varies drastically according to the nature of it's form, with elemental, metallic mercury being not too hazardous, its mainly the vapor which causes the danger due to its being inhaled in as fine a state of division, in the gaseous phase, as is possible and as such it is able to enter the body much more easily as mercury vapour than as bulk mercury metal. Then there is mercuric sulfide (cinnabar), the main natural ore of mercury, due to the great affinity of Hg for sulfur, this is as benign a compound of mercury as there is ever likely to be, its not very reactive, its either completely insoluble, or soluble to only the tiniest extent, and often as not it is chunks of rock, so it is really, really not bioavailable either and has no volatility unless heat is applied to roast the powdered ore and distill off the mercury, forming mercury vapour again, the toxicity increases dramatically with soluble salts, which can be much more easily absorbed, with the mercurous [Hg (I)] salts being of significantly lower toxicity than those in the Hg (II) oxidation state (mercuric salts) which are vastly more toxic, mercury (II) salts being the oxidation state of the salts used in preparing aluminium amalgams, and worst of all, there are organomercury compounds, the worst of these being methyl and dimethylmercury, which are volatile, highly lipophilic (fat-soluble) and extremely bioavailable organomercurials, that are absolutely scary lethal.
It is slow to be eliminated from the body, and being so lipophilic, it easily crosses the blood-brain-barrier, in addition, dimethylmercury, due to its very high affinity (mercury does in general) for sulfur, bonds, once it gets into the body to both free cysteine (one of the sulfur-containing, proteinogenic amino-acid) and to peptides and proteins containing a cysteine residue, and this allows the dimethylmercury-peptide or free cysteine complex to mimic another sulfur-containing aminoacid, methionine, and to actually undergo active transport past the blood brain barrier and into the brain. And once there, it is one of the most horrendously cruel, sadistic and noxious poisons going, and not a quick death either, but a long, slow, drawn out agonizing death by torture over many months of the most shockingly unpleasant suffering.
And the stuff is able to penetrate a great many kinds of natural and synthetic polymers and plastics, such as used for gloves, etc., and also to do the same to intact skin, penetrating many kinds of lab gloves within seconds and being absorbed within a minute or two at most into the body.
And when it gets there:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Wetterhahn
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minamata_disease
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niigata_Minamata_disease
That's what it does. 'Nuff said. MeHg and (Me2)Hg are both really, REALLY fucking bad news. There are things I won't work with in the lab, for ANY reason. Nothing anybody could give me, tell me or do for me would ever convince me to work with methyl/dimethylmercury, even with a full NBC suit, uni lab and complete suite of any and all equipment needed. And of those nasties I won't work with, MeHg/(Me2)Hg are right at the top of non-proteinaceous small molecule inorganic toxins (the strict definition of 'organic' is 'contains at least one carbon to carbon bond, rather than 'contains a carbon atom', although many such simple compounds, like methane, carbon tetrachloride, chloroform and the mono/dialkylmercury compounds of that sort are usually spoken of as organic; by the strict definition, dimethylmercury isn't, because the only bonds are carbon-hydrogen and mercury-carbon bonds, in monomethylmercury there is of course only one carbon atom, whilst even though dimethyl mercury possesses two methyl groups, they are each ligated to a central bridging mercury atom)
And as for toxicity, it takes as little as 100 microliters to kill an adult, via dermal absorption, after exposure to dimethylmercury of a doubled up pair of gloves, the (Me2)Hg having penetrated the glove and despite immediately being removed, what got through was enough to kill that scientist, Karen Wetterhahn. just a few tiny droplets, and within a minute or two of landing on her doubly gloved hand, proved enough to sign her death-warrant. Poor bastard, what an awful, awful way to go.
