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by sghodas 4538 days ago
Its solubility maxes out at 3%. ~5000 gallons in a river is hardly enough to get to those levels. The news is reporting that the concentration is about 3ppm. 3ppm of 4-methylcyclohexane methanol is about 0.021g of the chemical in 1L of water. The lowest LD50 for ingesting the chemical I've found is 800mg/kg. This means you'd have to drink 3086L of water for it to be lethal. The LD50 for skin contact is at least double the ingestion LD50.

That being said, I'm not going to take the risk, and I've only used water out of water bottles since this started.
2 comments
mikeyouse 4538 days ago
LD50 is fairly useless as it gives no indication of the toxicity of lower levels of the substance. It takes a large volume for some chemicals to kill you, but a much smaller amount can make your life very unpleasant.

The NIH has much more information about methylcyclohexanol here: http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@ter...

Edit -*

The NIH link is to a 4-methylcyclohexanol (CAS: 589-91-3), not to 4-methylcyclohexane methanol (CAS: 34885-03-5), a similar but distinct compound.

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maxerickson 4538 days ago
methylcyclohexanol and 4-methylcyclohexane methanol are different compounds.
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mikeyouse 4538 days ago
That damn extra carbon.

Any idea why the Wiki article gets the oxygen / hydrogen counts wrong?

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/4-methylcyclohexanemethanol]

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maxerickson 4538 days ago
As of this revision it matches what I see elsewhere:

http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=4-Methylcyclohexan...

Presumably whoever created the page copied the info box and forgot to edit it.

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sghodas 4538 days ago
That's a good point. It doesn't appear to be particularly dangerous at low levels - just unpleasant.
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medium 4538 days ago
Sghodas- I think you are missing the point. By your math and 'rational' it seems there shouldn't be an issue. This spill was not some homogeneous mixture you can easily calculate in PPM. This chemical has travelled wholly through the water plant into the water supply- solubility doesn't matter. Two to seven days have elapsed between intake from river, through filtration/ozone treatment, to holding water tower, then into public use. How many PPM do you think are in the green ice cubes someone found in their freezer? And at what PPM does ingestion cause long-term health effects?
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