The Energon Pub

Tekka wrote:It does seem a little dubious... I did a little reading, while I'm not sure on the accuracy of the information it seems that by all rights the child should be dead.

Ingestion

Gasoline is not as readily absorbed from the gastrointestinal tract as from the respiratory tract. In adults, about 20 to 50 g can cause severe intoxication and 350 g (12 oz.) can result in death for a 70 kg individual. As little as 10 to 15 g (less than one-half ounce) may be fatal in children. Symptoms of intoxication by ingestion of gasoline can range from vomiting, vertigo, drowsiness and confusion to loss of consciousness, convulsions, hemorrhaging of the lungs and internal organs, and death due to circulatory failure. Ingestion can cause irritation to the gastrointestinal mucosa and can be complicated by pulmonary aspiration, resulting in chemical pneumonitis.

From: http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/MHMI/mmg72.html

I'm glad somebody else came to their senses. I've always been under the impression that swallowing large amounts of gasoline would be fatal.

I think this story is BS, and I'm a little shocked that so many of us here believe it...

okay I started watching armada when i was 12, and after that I started watching G1 and there is no way I would drink gasoline, I mean electricity was converted to energon why didn't he stick his finger is a socket!

LOL!!! Darwin's law at work! Nice!

All I can say is that I hope he doesn't become a smoker!

"Before that, he was a very smart boy, and he could even repair the television. But now he does not know the answer of 7 plus 17."

How f*cking smart could he have been to start drinking gasoline?!?!?!

If he is so stupid to drink gasoline, then he deserves any consequences from it.

*sighs*

What is wrong with people these days? Seriously.

I blame the parents because they knew something was wrong and did nothing for the longest time.

Not to mention, they didn't try and teach their son the difference between reality and fantasy.

I'm worried that China will try and ban TransFormers and consider it a negative influence over the stupid acts of a single boy, and the neglect of his parents.

And if it's not China, some other country's news will get a hold of this and take it to the extreme.

Why? Because people just have no friggin' sense anymore. None.

No sympathy, the kid is a retard even before he started drinking gasoline.

Okay, so, I asked my sister about this. She's worked at a large number of big city hospitals from her residency onward, so I figure if anyone had actually ever drunk gasoline and been rushed to the hospital, she'd probably know.

First, she says that in her years working, it's never happened. Yeah, not even in the big psych hospital. Second, she thinks if he had small doses, it probably wouldn't kill him--remember the story said he started with butane (lighter fluid)? She said small doses would cause not just retardation but a number of neurological disorders--slurred speech, blindness, anosmia (the inability to smell), esophogeal damage, and so on, that could theoretically build up slowly over years.

So, depending on how much he was swilling, the story is *possible*.

The connection to Transformers, though, totally specious. I still suspect pica.

HK, we have the *weirdest* phone conversations....

What is this pica y'all keep mentioning?

NuclearConvoy wrote:What is this pica y'all keep mentioning?

Pica is a medical term. It's pronounced 'pike-uh', not like pikachu. It has some evolutionary basis *they think*, where starving people would crave something that would provide some sort of nutritional fix for a deficiency--like, say, if you're iron deficient, you might find yourself eating an iron-rich mud. Pregnant women often get a form of pica, that is generally turned into jokes about their weird craving for pickles and ice cream. Gestational pica goes away.

Childhood often has bouts of pica--in my generation, paste-eating was the big one. Kids just did it. Thankfully, paste isn't dangerous to your health. But paste is not food! I knew a kid who ate pencils--wood, graphite, everything. He couldn't help himself. He'd have a pencil at the beginning of the school day, and at the end, just the little metal barrel and the eraser were left. It's not like he was even conscious of it. You may have seen girls, if they have long hair, chewing on the end of their pigtail or braid. That's also pica. And the inevitable trip to the ER many parents have to take when their child eats coins. (And oh how distressed the parents are when they're told to just wait till it passes!) (I used to work in an ER).

Pica really only gets dangerous when you eat things that are harmful. Why is everyone freaking out about lead-based-paints and kids? You don't get lead poisoning from paint by looking at the wall--they knew that it's likely a kid would get a pica phase, and eat some paint if it were peeling. Eating glass is a dangerous form of pica, for reasons which I think should be obvious. Some people have suggested that 'vampirism'--the overwhelming desire to drink blood, is also a pica.

HK, a fountain of useless information.

Obviously, drinking gasoline is not a good way to mimic Transformers.