Talk:Median lethal dose

message: As I stated in my edit summary, the reference doesn't state an exact number.  It may be that they were unable to produce a statistically significant result in testing, or it may be that they were unable to kill any rats at all even at extreme levels--though that's really just speculation and doesn't belong in the main article.  Anyway, is it useful to keep this questionable number in the table?  Preferably, a better source should be found, but the typical chemical companies I use don't have that number in their MSDSs.  Also putting "check" tag on the number. 128.138.64.70 (talk) 17:53, 4 June 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: LD50 of H2O

message: This article seems to be slanted towards the animal rights movement, e.g. putting "controversy" at the top, and the only links pointing to "Animal Testing" and "Vivisection" (which in its own right is a fairly pejorative term). LD50 is a value arrived at through animal testing, true, but if this article is to be considered the norm then all drug pages should have links to "the horrors of vivisection"...62.56.126.163 20:48, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Yeah, the animal rights section should probably go after the basic concepts, and I hate 'controversy' sections - there's almost always a better title. Hopefully it's a little better now, though it could still do with external links on other angles of this topic. --Calair 16:53, 16 October 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: POV?

message: There is at least one drug (fentanyl) for which the wikipedia entry has LD50 info. Agreed, recreational fentanyl users are usually hardcore types (I was one, in the early 1980s!). But there are so many OTC medications or easy-to-get-a-prescription-for medications for which the LD50 is much lower than what laypersons think, otherwise there would be lots more successful suicide attempts. Which don't occur because most people with suicidal feelings think that "if you can kill yorself relatively painlessly with something, it must be hard to get".) 
::Putting  information on Wikipedia pages would be good, as wikipedia is an encyclopedia, although i think it would be necessary to add a small warning somewhere on page where the  is included that they should not solely depend on this information and especially not if they intend to use it as a 'rubric' for consumption. --Neur0X .talk 00:46, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I think listing  data for substances would be appropriate, but only if we're careful about verifiability and qualification.  values always depend on several qualifiers - mode of administration, subject species, and (very often) an extrapolation from animal results to humans, for instance. It often has political implications, and even without those, it's human nature to pick the most most impressive (i.e. most lethal) possible interpretation of the data. IMHO,  data should only be presented if it states the relevant measurement circumstances and is directly supported by an appropriate source. --Calair 07:00, 17 July 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: if we have an article on a chemical known for it's toxicity then we should include the LD50 (cyanide arsnic and the like). If not then it probably isn't relvant.Geni 18:17, 25 May 2005 (UTC)

text: Dangers or no dangers, Wikipedia has no responsibility to nanny people. We don't need to care if people could try to kill themselves with this information, simply because most people won't. The fact that shooting yourself in the head is rather deadly isn't exactly privileged information either. --217.91.122.24 (talk) 08:28, 18 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Should LD50's of substances be given in Wikipedia?

message: I removed this passage from the introduction:
Two species are normally required to be involved in the testing. A feeding syringe is forced down the animals’ throats, injecting into the stomach a chemical ingredient of the product, or the product itself, often household cleaners or gardening products like weedkillers. The forced feeding increases in amount until half the animals are dead, after experiencing vomiting and convulsions. Technicians note quantity required to kill 50% of the animals, and then the survivors are killed. No harmful effects are measured, just the lethal dose.
I did so because as it stood it was misleading; its position in the introductory section gives readers to understand that this description applies to all LD50 testing, which it certainly does not. For one thing, the methodology described would only provide a LD50 for ingestion - this might be useful for evaluating toxicity of a consumer product, but not for investigating (e.g.) a snake venom or an injected/inhaled anaesthetic. For another, while many toxins will cause vomiting and convulsions, this isn't universal. And whether harmful effects are measured depends very much on the researchers in question.
This material might be elsewhere in the article, if accompanied by information providing some context on just whose experimental process it's describing, but it doesn't belong in the intro. --Calair 03:14, 18 October 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Removed text

message: Removed this text: Similarly, in the case of certain metalic elements, plutonium in particular, the LD50 is properly expressed as µg/kg, or even as nanograms/kg.  About 1 µg of plutonium, if inhaled, is presumed to be probably a lethal dose, in the long term, because it is known that it will promote and almost guarantee lung cancer.
As per discussion on plutonium, there is a lot of dubious information about plutonium toxicity doing the rounds without citing any good sources; AFAICT, a lot of it ultimately seems to have come from Heinlein's fiction story The Long Watch. 
This article estimates the cancer risk from inhaling 1 µg of reactor-grade plutonium dust at around 1/200 (for Pu-239, around 1/1300) and cites several other sources that yield similar numbers. Markedly lower numbers need to be supported with citations. --Calair 04:11, 3 November 2005 (UTC)
replies: text: Depends. How much is 'some'? --Calair 00:55, 4 November 2005 (UTC)

text: This is one of the reasons why we don't take science on trust. Scientists are expected to show how they got their results, so other scientists can examine their reasoning and attempt to reproduce the data that supports it. It doesn't entirely eliminate the problem of vested interest, but it goes a long way to reduce it; this is why controversial claims need citations. --Calair 00:55, 4 November 2005 (UTC)
thread_title: Plutonium

message: It is usually expressed in terms of mg-min/m³ or  ppm
I removed 'ppm' because the units don't match - ppm is a concentration, whereas LCt50 is a concentration * time. This may have been a typo for ppm*min, but I don't know for sure. Will also change 'usually' to 'often' since I don't know whether mg-min/m^3 qualifies as 'usually' without this second unit. --Calair 03:14, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: LCt50

message: Is there a general database for all (almost all?) known LD50 values for all tested chemicals? -Samulili 10:26, 16 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Some MSDSes will contain that information, and I think the Merck Index might also contain LD50/LC50 values for a wide range of chemicals. I don't know of a specific LD50 database, though. --Calair 01:18, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Database for LD50 values 

message: since it seems rather tedious to write out  in it's html/wikified form, I made a template in which when you wish to say  you simply type --Neur0X .talk 00:40, 15 July 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Added LD50 template 

message: One faces often an confusing (confused) values of LD50 in humans. For instance:
"LD50 of batrachotoxin: estimated at 1 to 2 µg/kg in humans."
Now, it is certainly possible to extrapolate some biochemical/toxicological research values to get an "estimated LD50 in human", but is it of any worth? Moreover, often the "LD50" dose is beeing unintentionally interchanged with the lethal/fatal dose in human (so often exaggerated use of specific expert terms by general public or media, sometimes even inappropriate use of these terms by an expert). That is, f.e., from the information, that a 300 mg dose of potassium cyanide ingested killed an 75 kg individual, is concluded, that the "oral LD50 in human" is 4 mg/kg.
I think, that it is not right to mention an LD50 dose in human, unless it is really found out by an LD50-experiment (which is, beside some Nazi crimes during WW2, almost certainly not), because:
a) it is almost never plausible enough precise, because not based on realistic, controlled experiments;
b) it is of no practical value; even if an LD50 value for a specific chemical/poison was known, it would have no effect on medical and/or forensic aspect of the toxicity of substance/poisoning by substance; in most poisonings, intensive/specific medical care is needed even if LD10, LD1 or LDLo are ingested/resorbed. On the other hand, even a LD99 dose must not be inevitably lethal in an individual.
I would suggest the more appropriate and rational use of terms "estimated LD in human" (which could be anything from LD10 to LD99), or "LDLo".--84.163.109.162 12:12, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text: I think the answer here is to enforce Wikipedia:Verifiability. If we have a reliable source that lists a human LD50 figure, we can cite it (although it would be good to indicate how that figure is derived - I agree that extrapolated values are very unreliable). If we don't have a citeable source, the claim shouldn't be in the article. --Calair 12:43, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree; however, I still think that the use of "estimated human LD" is more appropriate, reality-close and relevant.--84.163.109.162 12:55, 27 March 2007 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree too, but we need some exact values.  Why have there been NO controlled LD50 experiments in humans? Someone should perform one sometime. --Whoop whoop pull up (talk) 15:17, 3 October 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  "LD<sub>50</sub>"-values in human. 

message: This article was automatically assessed because at least one WikiProject had rated the article as start, and the rating on other projects was brought up to start class. BetacommandBot 16:29, 10 November 2007 (UTC)
thread_title:  WikiProject class rating

message: Just wanted to announce the creation of a new Toxicology Task Force under WikiProject Medicine. Feel free to come and sign up. Thanks -- Jrtayloriv (talk) 04:06, 3 February 2010 (UTC)
thread_title: Toxicology Task Force

message: :LD50 still remains popular, despite its general weakness in providing a useful measure of toxicity.
The weaknesses of LD50 are adequately described in other sections. Where it was placed, this implied that the animal cruelty concerns outweighed the value of the measurement, which would be an unsourced judgement rather than a statement of fact.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.227.165.106 (talk) 08:20, 2 July 2010 (UTC)
thread_title:  Removed line 

message: How was this site not a good source for the human LD50 of LSD? --Whoop whoop pull up Bitching Betty | Averted crashes 00:09, 18 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  LSD human LD<sub>50</sub> 

message: I started formatting the table so that it could be sorted by LD50 before I saw that it was listed in decreasing order of LD50.  This should be unnoticeable for the reader, except that now about 1/3 of the values in the LD50 column will sort correctly whereas previously ~0 would.  I'll leave it where it is rather than continuing to make an unnecessary change or undoing work that might be useful later.--Wikimedes (talk) 06:31, 1 August 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  sorting table by LD50 

message: Seemed these sources are no longer working. It has stated: "The University of Oxford Department of Chemistry MSDS web resource is no longer being maintained. Since this resource provided safety information it is not appropriate that the MSDS web resource is still used as a reference resource. The manufacturers and suppliers have a legal duty to provide and maintain MSDS information for the chemicals that they sell. Please refer to the suppliers web pages for safety information and data sheets."--Inspector (talk) 13:21, 8 February 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Unfortunately it seems that their robots.txt didn't let archive.org archive them either. Anyone know of any other sources or mirrors of them? SubTenebra (talk) 20:14, 23 November 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  what happened to all those http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk sources? 

message: source 32 directs to a webpage that does not load  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 97.65.96.146 (talk) 21:29, 13 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  source 32 directs to a webpage that does not load 

message: IPs seem to be repeatedly incorporating a link to a cartoon. Suggest semi-protect this page to prevent this. Lesion (talk) 14:35, 11 September 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Time to semi-protect this page for a while? 

message: All the references to MSDS are dead now, and it seems like they have been since 2011. Either remove the references or try provide another resource. (at this point this concerns reference numbers 7, 12, 14, 15, 16, 21, 22, 35, 36,37 and 40 (that's a lot))  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 217.189.227.94 (talk) 03:11, 18 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Links Dead 

message: Is there a typical probability distribution that can be derived from just the LD50 value and that works for most toxins? If so, this should be stated in the article. If not, of what value is LD50 alone? --Mudd1 (talk) 18:47, 23 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  Typical probability distribution 

message: I note this article was deleted and redirected to median lethal dose, removing some content. Acknowledging the need for bold edits, by user:Emily Temple-Wood (NIOSH) who is a wikipedian in residence, deleting such significant amounts of content, and merging content needs at least some discussion on talk pages. 2001:44B8:21B:8F00:D1A0:8003:7AF8:7DA (talk) 12:49, 10 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: Hi anon, sorry it took me so long to get back to you - I've just gotten back from vacation and I had a bit of a backlog to catch up on. There was a discussion involving User:DePiep and others who I can't recall right now on Template talk:Chembox about merging the content. If I left something out while merging that wasn't duplicated elsewhere, please feel free to add it back. :) Best,  Emily Temple-Wood (NIOSH) (talk) 20:51, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: re IP: No you cannot claim back-in-time discussion in this. When you say 'significant amounts of content' were deleted without you linking to them, that's not enough (but this illustrated that you do know what I am talking about). You do do can open a fresh talk on it. Good quotes or diffs wold make your case stronger. (To be clear: you post here did not give me a clue about your issue). -DePiep (talk) 21:39, 12 July 2015 (UTC)
thread_title: Revert of redirect to lethal dose

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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thread_title:  External links modified 

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-- Source[17](http://msds.chem.ox.ac.uk/index2.html) is outdated. Please look for another source(and proceed to fix it)  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 180.190.174.11 (talk) 16:37, 10 February 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  External links modified 

message: Is correct?  — Preceding unsigned comment added by GianoM (talk • contribs) 08:17, 8 September 2020 (UTC)
thread_title:  Nicotine is present twice