>Yttrium is mostly dangerous in the working environment, due to the fact that damps and gasses can be inhaled with air. This can cause lung embolisms, especially during long-term exposure. Yttrium can also cause cancer with humans, as it enlarges the chances of lung cancer when it is inhaled.
>Indium compounds are encountered rarely by most people. All indium compounds should be regarded as highly toxic. Indium compounds damage the heart, kidney, and liver, and may be teratogenic.
Ross's lymphoma was thought to have been caused by dichloromethane exposure from his odorless paint thinner (and him 'beating the devil' out of his brushes aerosolizing it).
It's now banned in paint thinners as a result of some pretty long lobbying efforts. It's a little sad, since chemicals like DCM are hard to replace, but if it saves the lives of our artists at the expense of them having a bit of a harder time cleaning their brushes, maybe we can live with that.
I don't think that is a very good example. A better example would be is there a safe compound with lead or arsenic or mercury (known toxic elements) you would want to take into your body?
Well sulfates in general tend to be highly insoluble in water, and therefore biologically inert, so I think this is still kind of a cherry-picked example
There is a strong correlation between incidence of mercury amalgam and alzheimer's. Obviously correlation is not causation, but I'd still be wary of putting mercury in my body...
I'd also add that elemental mercury is toxic if inhaled as a vapor. While I mentioned fillings as a safe use, there is a (very small) amount of vapor released when they're installed, and more gets released if they need to be removed. Not enough to matter in adults. If you needed enough fillings for it to be a concern the dental microbiota issues causing the decay would be a far bigger general health threat. Indeed, Alzheimer's is linked to gingivitis (gum disease) and the hypothesized link with amalgam fillings may be an artifact of people with worse gum disease having worse dental health, and thus more fillings.
I live in pride of my mercury-compound amalgam. You can choose to live in fear.
"Numerous other organizations have also publicly declared the safety and effectiveness of amalgam. These include the Mayo clinic,[21] the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA),[22] Health Canada,[23] Alzheimer's Association,[24] American Academy of Pediatrics,[25] Autism Society of America,[26] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,[27] National Multiple Sclerosis Society,[28] New England Journal of Medicine,[29] International Journal of Dentistry,[30] National Council Against Health Fraud,[31] The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research NIDCR,[32] American Cancer Society,[33] Lupus Foundation of America,[34] the American College of Medical Toxicology,[35] the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology"
How many diseases did they significance test? What's the causal mechanism? Was there a proportional response, or was the causal variable thresholded arbitrarily?
For better or worse, the dentists I have gone to in recent years don't use it any more. I have some old mercury fillings and at least one newer resin one.
Your link is interesting. It seems like the arguments against mercury amalgam being a problem include:
1) organizations like you listed saying don't worry
2) obvious scammers making a living blaming everything on fillings, even nonexistent ones
3) only 5% of people with fillings having elevated mercury in urine, particularly gum chewers
4) "hypersensitivity or allergy" are the "most likely health effects" but there is not clear evidence for or against autoimmune disorders caused by fillings.
It seems to me that it's perfectly conceivable, at the same time, that there is or has been a scam/cult of mercury fillings causing every possible problem, and at the same time, that they do do something to a minority of recipients that is different from acute mercury toxicity that we know about. There could be a combination of more than normal mercury released and more than normal sensitivity.
Something that would be interesting to research, I think, is the microbiome of people with and without different kinds of fillings. There's been some recent claim(s) about the bacteria that cause gingivitis being linked to Alzheimers.
Organic chemistry should probably be made mandatory as part of high school science education like physics. Parent looks like Exhibit A for anti-thiomersal hysteria.
In Germany it's 1 year of the final 2 year Chemistry elective, where most people instead choose Biology or Physics (and I think if you are on a language focused path you might not even have to do one of them).
Just looked it up and you are right, all of 10th grade is already focused on organic chemistry[0] (in Bavaria) for those with a STEM profile, while other profiles also have organic chemistry that year, but a bit less of it.
In the US, high school includes very basic chemistry lumped into general science topics. Pretty much all organic chemistry I've learned has been from Khan academy and wikipedia...
One of the things I learnt in actual chemistry classes was that organomercury compounds actually tend to be really toxic compared to elemental mercury. Unfortunately, there's been a fair amount of misinformation spread about this online in the name of fighting anti-vaxxers, often involving misleading analogues with stuff like chlorine and sodium.
I believe that the anti-thiomersal hysteria was quite justified.
Even if thiomersal is more effective at killing bacteria than at killing humans, there are no doubts that it is also toxic for humans and for any other animals.
While the thiomersal dose injected together with a vaccine is small enough so that in most cases it will not cause damages before being eliminated from the body, the risks are not negligible.
To willingly inject yourself with poison, even in a quantity that hopefully will not hurt you, seems rather stupid.
Better alternative bactericides must be found for vaccine preservation.
The amount of mercury intake with vaccine that was preserved using thiomersal is smaller than amount mercury taken into organism when you drink a cup of tap water in many countries, including tap water declared safe to drink.
While you may be right that the total amount of mercury is not an issue relative to other sources, allergies to thiomersal are a real thing. Here's a page on it: https://dermnetnz.org/topics/thiomersal-allergy/
Personally, I eventually discovered that my terrible problems with wearing contact lenses in the 1990's were caused by the thiomersal used as a preservative in the saline solution I was using. Given my known and tested reaction to having it in my eyes and on my skin, I would be very reluctant to have an injection that contained it.
Guess we should ban peanuts too, since allergies to that exist too. Some population being allergic isn't an argument to remove it, rather one for transparency and alternatives.
I've actually worked for decades in science and the last ten in a chemistry department as a scientist looking for new cancer drugs. Don't assume things. I'm not that afraid of thiomersal since it is given so rarely. That doesn't mean I would love to be around a new pigment made from mercury...
Why does that matter? The point is you can combine elements and create compounds that are drastically different to the components with different properties.
Obvious one is water. H - explody. O2 - burny. H2O - puts out fires, quenches your thirst, no longer a gas, not very reactive.
Because corrosive is way different than toxic. Particularly, acid/base corrosion can and will be neutralized by our body once sufficiently diluted. Toxic compounds, especially heavy metals, stay toxic even if diluted.
The point is, that making corrosive properties go away is easy and very typical, whereas toxic properties often have a habit of not going away after it enters the body.
Most corrosive substances release their effects on the surface they contact you, but toxic effects, especially the problematic ones, are way deeper.
The distinction is fairly important, especially regarding heavy metals.
Like hydrofluoric acid, for example. It's fairly easy to not notice you spilled some on your hand/arm until after it soaked through your skin, upon which the issue is systemic toxicity or at least bone damage. In contrast, sulfuric, nitric, and hydrochloric acids at any concentration up to azeotropic just cause burns and, for sulfuric acid, dehydration. There are no acute systemic risks from all but large-area burns, and even then it's mostly due to fluid loss which can be compensated for. (Yes, there are later risks due to loss-of-skin and skin graft surgery, but none of those complications try to have you pronounced dead you within a few hours of the spill.)
Likely for the same reason we rarely use lead paint anymore, or why micro plastics are a concern in bath products. Just for a couple of examples of products you don’t consume ending up in animal bodies.
"Dental amalgam is a mixture of metals, consisting of liquid (elemental) mercury and a powdered alloy composed of silver, tin, and copper. Approximately half (50%) of dental amalgam is elemental mercury by weight. The chemical properties of elemental mercury allow it to react with and bind together the silver/copper/tin alloy particles to form an amalgam."
Amalgam fillings do offgas tiny amounts of mercury. Of course, this is a controversial topic and there's a lot of misinformation around, so do your own research. Personally, I came to the conclusion that the one amalgam filling I have is ok but too many would cause potentially toxic buildup over a lifetime so I'll never get another.
Yes. As one example, arsenobetaine is an arsenic-containing compound that is naturally present in almost all fish that we consume. It is entirely harmless to humans in normal amounts, since we don't metabolize it into ordinary arsenic.
Its oral LD50 was tested to be more than 5000mg/kg according to Shepherd Color Company's MSDS for Blue 10G513 (as it is known commercially). That's well into "non-toxic" as categorized by the EPA. For perspective, that's more than ten times less toxic than caffeine.
So, probably pretty safe when used appropriately. I wouldn't go inhaling it, since any fine powder's not great for the lungs, but that shouldn't be news to anyone. Just wear your N95 when mixing dry pigments as you always should.
Isn't LD50 only relevant to acute exposure?[0] Just because you can eat 5 grams of something and survive doesn't mean repeated exposure to it in smaller quantities or in other ways won't hurt you (obviously). E.g. acute inhalation of asbestos has no recorded mortality. I think I'm missing something in your post.
It's not the LD50 for Cobalt Blue, but the LD50 for soluble Cobalt salts is between 150 and 500 mg/kg and Cobalt toxicity seems to be a thing. But the LD50(rat) for cobalt blue is > 10000 mg/kg according to the MSDS I'm looking at. That doesn't sound toxic.
Wiki says this about cobalt: "it causes respiratory problems when inhaled. It also causes skin problems when touched; after nickel and chromium, cobalt is a major cause of contact dermatitis"
So for people looking for an example of something that's somewhat toxic, but much less toxic as a paint. Here you go, Cobalt Blue. The color this new can be substituted for. yeah the toxicities are different, but it's the same idea.
Dangerous pigments is old news to painters, and artists in general. Check out the book Artist Beware (Michael McCann). Pigments I used, and still use when I can get them, are the Cadmiums (red, yellow), flake white (lead oxide) and Naples yellow. All very poisonous.
A great influence on me as an artist, and a good friend, died prematurely almost certainly as a result of his exposure to dangerous materials. In his case, asbestos.
Cobalt is used in some colors. Many oil paints are filled with things that can kill you in large doses. Bob Ross likely died from inhaling paint thinner fumes.
I've bought several hundred tubes of paint in last 20 years. I've seen artists gravitating towards more expensive paints as a sign of better pigmentation which is completely misplaced. Pricing of pigments is largely a complex equation including marketing by paint manufacturers to pose Cadmiums and Chromiums as "premium" quality paints. The truth couldn't be farther from that. Modern synthetic pigments are superior, safer and have far better lightfastness than the Cadmiums and Chromiums. Perylene red is amazing. Mix it with a dash of Titanium white and you can get very close to the opacity of Cadmiums. Mix it with Zinc white and you've got a far more brilliant red than anything else. But, Artists' I've worked with tend to gullibly gravitating towards the more expensive == better philosophy. I found this hilarious when buying paint during my early days in art world.
The quality of paint is measured by several characteristics such as pigment load, lightfastness, opacity/transparency, tinting strength, etc. Not its scarcity in nature.
I use a Yellow Ochre Light, Pthalo Blue, Titanium White, Zinc White, Transparent Oxide Red (for blocking), Pthalo Green and Perylene Red :)
Although, you can just use Richard Schmid's palette, replace all the toxic junk with modern pigments and you're good to go. The thing is to stick with the palette forever for many decades so that your paintings have a cohesive harmony.
I notice that the Windsor & Newton watercolour series has nothing called Perylene Red, but it has a nice looking colour named Perylene Maroon that seems similar.
This is probably not an example of a Giffen good. Rather, it’s better categorized as a Veblen good. The increasing consumption of Giffen goods with higher prices is predicted by the standard rational-agent economic theory, and requires the good to be a dominant portion of a consumer’s expenditures. This condition is hard to satisfy, and is typically only found in situations where the price of a staple food increases. Veblen goods, on the other hand, are those that are consumed precisely because of their high price, and are not predicted by standard microeconomic theory.
This is an area that I know absolutely nothing about, so the notion that new pigments are being created is fascinating to me. I’ve never really considered pigments and the chemicals used to make all of these colors.
Consider getting the book "The Secret Lives of Colors." The book itself is a beautiful object and the contents are a great dive in to the history and chemistry of pigment and color.
"From Egyptian wall paintings to the Venetian Renaissance, impressionism to digital images, Philip Ball tells the fascinating story of how art, chemistry, and technology have interacted throughout the ages to render the gorgeous hues we admire on our walls and in our museums."
I would love to see this color in person. I had not realized it was such an excellent IR reflector either, from an industrial perspective that should be a boon for IR lamp heating systems in terms of efficiency.
"YInMn Blue’s appeal stems in part from its high opacity, which means you don’t need to apply much of it to get a good coating."
This! I've noticed that blue exterior house paint, even with an expensive primer, just doesn't cover very well. This stuff seems about 100 times too expensive for that application.
If I was working in a lab and my experiment turned a deep blue I'd say "cool!" and move on. I didn't know that discovering a new color was something meaningful.
I wonder who told these scientists "stop what you're doing you've just discovered a new pigment".
Chemistry - either organic or inorganic. We already know what is responsible for the colors of molecules. So you can build new molecule or complex based on those principles and some of them turn out to be scientifically interesting or commercially valuable.
> How would you know what you’re looking at is novel?
Pigments are chemicals. Chemist can use various techniques to analyse a sample and tell what is its composition. After that they search for it in the literature and if they find that the given chemical was not described previously then it is novel. That’s it.
> I don’t get it, how would you even discover a pigment?
The article answers this. “ Chemist Mas Subramanian and his team serendipitously came upon it while conducting experiments with rare earth elements as part of their work with semiconductors.”
That is to say they were experimenting and something turned out as blue. They didn’t expect this so they analyzed the sample and then did a literature search.
Indium is very rare. Used for transparent conductors on displays etc. Is it really worth it to use it in a slightly better blue? In other words: does its current price really reflect all the future use we could get from Indium?
Indium is comparable in abundance with gold, so it is indeed very rare.
Indium is completely irreplaceable in LED's, especially in the LED's used for lighting, and also in other important semiconductor devices, e.g. in the GaN transistors that are now used in the latest miniaturized power bricks.
Currently the largest quantity of indium is used for the transparent conductors required in all displays, from smartphones to TV's and monitors. There are alternatives for this use, but all have various disadvantages, e.g. a lower lifetime or a lower efficiency.
I agree that wasting indium, which is probably the element with the lowest known resources compared to the known future needs for it, to make something like pigments, where there are a lot of mostly equivalent alternatives, is a serious mistake.
I would say, do not underestimate the value of art. The article described an artist that made is own paint from the pigment. He painted a depiction of an ancient bird, its absolutely beautiful. This use was not a waste of resources and will in fact last much much longer than any screen made in 2021.
Its arguable that using precious resources for products that last less than 20 years, in many cases less than 5 years, is a true waste.
I agree that using such a pigment for a small number of art objects would certainly be justified, like also the use of gold in art objects or jewelry, instead of its more valuable technical uses, for which there are no alternatives, e.g. in protecting electrical contacts from corrosion or in semiconductor metallization.
However, if instead of using this pigment in a few valuable paintings, it would be used in a high number of ephemeral sketches done for practice, that would be a waste.
Nevertheless, the high price at which the pigment has been launched is good, because it will probably deter casual use.
>However, if instead of using this pigment in a few valuable paintings, it would be used in a high number of ephemeral sketches done for practice, that would be a waste.
Just like a high number of ephemeral smartphone screens would be a waste?
> The store sells the paint for $179.40 for just 40 ML. By comparison, the other structure acrylics it offers starting in sizes no smaller than 75 ML are available from just $8.70.
$4.485 per ML versus $0.116 per ML.
That's a difference of almost 40x cost.
I wonder how much of that is offset by how saturated/opaque the pigment is. Still, an incredibly expensive blue.
> Connecticut artist Michael Rothman got his hands on some Kremer YInMn blue pigment in 2019 and produced his own paint, “hand milling the dry material in acrylic emulsion resin,” he said.
I wonder what the difference in cost is for the dry pigment
These people really didnt think about how people are going to pronounce their pigment? YInMn - what a monster of a name. In the olden days at least people gave colors great names that were easy to prounounce and provided them personality. Ultramarine, prussian blue.. Even vantablack has a nice rhythm.
It's nice as techinical name, I guess, but I'd hope they have some better brand name they are going by.
It seems to me like it'd have a Chinese-like pronunciation, that is Yin Min.
Tangentially, as a non-native speaker, "ultramarine" has a fairly similar amount of information encoded in the name as "Yinmn"--pretty much zero. So, the two names ("ultramarine" vs "yinmn") are pretty much equivalent to eme, personally.
Goes to show that naming things "properly" is difficult (I suspect it's impossible actually).
Crayola is calling the crayon made with this color "Bluetiful", does that help? Wikipedia also refers to it as "Oregon Blue, Mas Blue, or Yin Min Blue" so I think it will be commonly called something else.
Anyways, you're on HN, you know geeks shouldn't name things, but they do anyways. Think "XBox" as a perfect example.
I kind of thought you were kidding, because nobody on earth cares what color their workstation/datacenter graphics card is... but indeed they are using YInMn blue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMXS1A2uBeE And made a video about how cool they are for putting certain paint on a graphics card.
I will continue to be amused because people call Intel "team blue" and AMD "team red", but in this case AMD's product is blue.
> because nobody on earth cares what color their workstation/datacenter graphics card is
I think some HPC applications do actually have some aesthetics because the bean counters want to be able to look at their billion dollar datacenter and say "My datacenter is bigger/prettier than yours" rather than just having a black front panel.
> I kind of thought you were kidding, because nobody on earth cares what color their workstation/datacenter graphics card is...
I’m not sure if you’re joking here or something, but as it turns out, many people buy video cards to play video games, and many of them care about how their gaming device looks like. They install LEDs and stuff. It’s pretty cool.
Radeon Pro is the professional line, for workstation use cases (CAD, rendering, that sort of thing). They are not aimed at the consumer market, and AMD doesn't appear to paint their consumer cards blue.
True, but these are workstation cards, they're for GPGPU workloads or Rendering workstations for pro artist. You'd rarely if ever find them in a gaming PC (too expensive with no real benefit for gaming workloads).
There are other uses, too. AMD makes low profile (?) radeon pro cards like the WX2100 which are smaller and have lower power requirements than their consumer offerings.
I got a used one off eBay for my tower, mostly because I wanted something AMD for linux usage with as low heat emission as possible, but honestly I really like the look of that blue too :)
Even if I have a black boxy case with no fancy windows or anything else... Interesting to learn it's this neat pigment.
But straight up it would make no sense for a non professional workload. You could get a AMD 5500 XT 4GB GDDR6 (WX2100 is 2GB GDDR5) for a similar ball park in price with 5x the bandwidth and a lot more graphical horse power for a gaming workload. And if heat is the concern it would be trivial to underclock and undervolt to get it quite chilly.
You may have some special situation and have got a great deal but for the most part they should be of little interest to standard consumers.
Looking briefly at ebay, the 5500 XT goes for around 250-300 USD, while the WX2100 goes for around 50-70 USD.
And the 5500 XT has a TDP of 130 watts, vs 25 watts for the WX2100. The WX2100 is also smaller, and doesn't require additional power from the PSU, running entirely off the PCIe slot power.
Not that I'm saying it's great for gaming. But I'm running it on a IBM POWER processor which can't really play x86 games anyway, just open-source and java games (it can tank minecraft at 4k pretty nicely). It lacks an on-board accelerated GPU too, so going without isn't really an option.
I agree almost everyone should probably just get a better gaming card, but for the price this thing runs a 4k monitor great, has good video en/decoders, and a cool blue exterior ;)
>AMD announced in July 2016 that the pigment would be used on new Radeon Pro WX and Pro SSG professional GPUs for the energy efficiency that stems from its near-infrared reflecting property
Is this ok?
>Yttrium is mostly dangerous in the working environment, due to the fact that damps and gasses can be inhaled with air. This can cause lung embolisms, especially during long-term exposure. Yttrium can also cause cancer with humans, as it enlarges the chances of lung cancer when it is inhaled.
>Indium compounds are encountered rarely by most people. All indium compounds should be regarded as highly toxic. Indium compounds damage the heart, kidney, and liver, and may be teratogenic.
https://www.lenntech.com/periodic/elements/y.htm
Probably not good, but consider Cadmium Red, Chromium Green, Lead White, and Vermillion (Mercury), among others.
Yeah, but they cause cancer. Things like lymphomas that killed Bob Ross cuz those are the pigments painters use.
Ross's lymphoma was thought to have been caused by dichloromethane exposure from his odorless paint thinner (and him 'beating the devil' out of his brushes aerosolizing it).
It's now banned in paint thinners as a result of some pretty long lobbying efforts. It's a little sad, since chemicals like DCM are hard to replace, but if it saves the lives of our artists at the expense of them having a bit of a harder time cleaning their brushes, maybe we can live with that.
Yes, just another few elements to leak into environment, rivers, oceans.
It does not matter if the chemical compound is inert or not, the elements will be well incorporated into a new vector of nature.
Chemical reactions (such as forming it into a pigment) greatly change the biological effects substances have.
For example, you probably shouldn't drink OH- or H2O2, even though it is made of the same atoms as water.
Just because the pure elemental form is toxic doesn't make compounds with it toxic as well.
I don't think that is a very good example. A better example would be is there a safe compound with lead or arsenic or mercury (known toxic elements) you would want to take into your body?
What about Barium? Water-soluble barium compounds are toxic while the insoluble barium sulfate is used as radiocontrast agent.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barium_sulfate#Radiocontrast_a...
Well sulfates in general tend to be highly insoluble in water, and therefore biologically inert, so I think this is still kind of a cherry-picked example
Isn’t cherry-picking kind of the point here?
Mercury amalgam (silver, tin, zinc, copper, etc) fillings.
There is a strong correlation between incidence of mercury amalgam and alzheimer's. Obviously correlation is not causation, but I'd still be wary of putting mercury in my body...
No there isn’t a correlation. Maybe you are thinking aluminum? Even then the data is weak.
Mercury salts are corrosive, organomercury compounds are highly neurotoxic and elemental mercury is relatively non-toxic if ingested.
The form of the element matters a lot.
I'd also add that elemental mercury is toxic if inhaled as a vapor. While I mentioned fillings as a safe use, there is a (very small) amount of vapor released when they're installed, and more gets released if they need to be removed. Not enough to matter in adults. If you needed enough fillings for it to be a concern the dental microbiota issues causing the decay would be a far bigger general health threat. Indeed, Alzheimer's is linked to gingivitis (gum disease) and the hypothesized link with amalgam fillings may be an artifact of people with worse gum disease having worse dental health, and thus more fillings.
Gonna need to see a source on that one. I've never seen it and I follow biology news quite a lot.
Mercury? Of course. Tooth fillings.
Just google "mercury amalgam cancer".
I live in pride of my mercury-compound amalgam. You can choose to live in fear.
"Numerous other organizations have also publicly declared the safety and effectiveness of amalgam. These include the Mayo clinic,[21] the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA),[22] Health Canada,[23] Alzheimer's Association,[24] American Academy of Pediatrics,[25] Autism Society of America,[26] U.S. Environmental Protection Agency,[27] National Multiple Sclerosis Society,[28] New England Journal of Medicine,[29] International Journal of Dentistry,[30] National Council Against Health Fraud,[31] The National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research NIDCR,[32] American Cancer Society,[33] Lupus Foundation of America,[34] the American College of Medical Toxicology,[35] the American Academy of Clinical Toxicology"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dental_amalgam_controversy
I'm not deep in a hole "living in fear," I just got the resin and don't have to think about it anymore.
The resin fillings don’t last nearly as long. You’ll need a replacement down the road. I’m going on 40 years or so with my mercury filling.
According to my dentist, the resin fillings are good for about 10 years. This matches with my experience of them falling out after about that long...
From that link:
“A large retrospective cohort study found a significant association of mercury based fillings with the development of Parkinson's disease.”
(Reference to 2000 - 2008 study in Taiwan.)
How many diseases did they significance test? What's the causal mechanism? Was there a proportional response, or was the causal variable thresholded arbitrarily?
For better or worse, the dentists I have gone to in recent years don't use it any more. I have some old mercury fillings and at least one newer resin one.
Your link is interesting. It seems like the arguments against mercury amalgam being a problem include:
1) organizations like you listed saying don't worry
2) obvious scammers making a living blaming everything on fillings, even nonexistent ones
3) only 5% of people with fillings having elevated mercury in urine, particularly gum chewers
4) "hypersensitivity or allergy" are the "most likely health effects" but there is not clear evidence for or against autoimmune disorders caused by fillings.
It seems to me that it's perfectly conceivable, at the same time, that there is or has been a scam/cult of mercury fillings causing every possible problem, and at the same time, that they do do something to a minority of recipients that is different from acute mercury toxicity that we know about. There could be a combination of more than normal mercury released and more than normal sensitivity.
Something that would be interesting to research, I think, is the microbiome of people with and without different kinds of fillings. There's been some recent claim(s) about the bacteria that cause gingivitis being linked to Alzheimers.
Here (DE) they stopped using it for fillings where it'd be visible in social settings.
Just google "vaccine autism" - what's the difference?
theirs is based in scientific knowledge, yours is based in ignorance of that knowledge
"molecules are not the same as elements"
now repeat it with me
"molecules are not the same as elements"
Health-related topics is one place where google fails miserably.
Organic chemistry should probably be made mandatory as part of high school science education like physics. Parent looks like Exhibit A for anti-thiomersal hysteria.
It is not? I had at least 2 years of organic chemistry at high school (Czechia).
In Germany it's 1 year of the final 2 year Chemistry elective, where most people instead choose Biology or Physics (and I think if you are on a language focused path you might not even have to do one of them).
It depends on the state level, but I believe in most (if not all?) you need to take at least one year of anorganic and one year of organic chemistry
Just looked it up and you are right, all of 10th grade is already focused on organic chemistry[0] (in Bavaria) for those with a STEM profile, while other profiles also have organic chemistry that year, but a bit less of it.
[0]: http://www.isb-gym8-lehrplan.de/contentserv/3.1.neu/g8.de/id...
same in Egypt.
In the US, high school includes very basic chemistry lumped into general science topics. Pretty much all organic chemistry I've learned has been from Khan academy and wikipedia...
One of the things I learnt in actual chemistry classes was that organomercury compounds actually tend to be really toxic compared to elemental mercury. Unfortunately, there's been a fair amount of misinformation spread about this online in the name of fighting anti-vaxxers, often involving misleading analogues with stuff like chlorine and sodium.
I believe that the anti-thiomersal hysteria was quite justified.
Even if thiomersal is more effective at killing bacteria than at killing humans, there are no doubts that it is also toxic for humans and for any other animals.
While the thiomersal dose injected together with a vaccine is small enough so that in most cases it will not cause damages before being eliminated from the body, the risks are not negligible.
To willingly inject yourself with poison, even in a quantity that hopefully will not hurt you, seems rather stupid.
Better alternative bactericides must be found for vaccine preservation.
The amount of mercury intake with vaccine that was preserved using thiomersal is smaller than amount mercury taken into organism when you drink a cup of tap water in many countries, including tap water declared safe to drink.
That's why it wasn't justified.
While you may be right that the total amount of mercury is not an issue relative to other sources, allergies to thiomersal are a real thing. Here's a page on it: https://dermnetnz.org/topics/thiomersal-allergy/
Personally, I eventually discovered that my terrible problems with wearing contact lenses in the 1990's were caused by the thiomersal used as a preservative in the saline solution I was using. Given my known and tested reaction to having it in my eyes and on my skin, I would be very reluctant to have an injection that contained it.
Guess we should ban peanuts too, since allergies to that exist too. Some population being allergic isn't an argument to remove it, rather one for transparency and alternatives.
No it should be more like: I guess we should not put peanuts into vaccines without serious consideration.
I've actually worked for decades in science and the last ten in a chemistry department as a scientist looking for new cancer drugs. Don't assume things. I'm not that afraid of thiomersal since it is given so rarely. That doesn't mean I would love to be around a new pigment made from mercury...
> A better example would be is there a safe compound with lead or arsenic or mercury (known toxic elements) you would want to take into your body?
Dental amalgam
There's a safe compound with sodium and chlorine that I eat every day.
They are not toxic though - they are just so reactive that they corrode tissue.
Why does that matter? The point is you can combine elements and create compounds that are drastically different to the components with different properties.
Obvious one is water. H - explody. O2 - burny. H2O - puts out fires, quenches your thirst, no longer a gas, not very reactive.
Because corrosive is way different than toxic. Particularly, acid/base corrosion can and will be neutralized by our body once sufficiently diluted. Toxic compounds, especially heavy metals, stay toxic even if diluted.
Again, so what?
The point being made is that you can take dangerous elements and then create a compound that doesn’t share the properties of the elements.
So a counter argument is to show that’s not true for the elements that make up the compound for this blue dye.
The point is, that making corrosive properties go away is easy and very typical, whereas toxic properties often have a habit of not going away after it enters the body.
Most corrosive substances release their effects on the surface they contact you, but toxic effects, especially the problematic ones, are way deeper.
The distinction is fairly important, especially regarding heavy metals.
Like hydrofluoric acid, for example. It's fairly easy to not notice you spilled some on your hand/arm until after it soaked through your skin, upon which the issue is systemic toxicity or at least bone damage. In contrast, sulfuric, nitric, and hydrochloric acids at any concentration up to azeotropic just cause burns and, for sulfuric acid, dehydration. There are no acute systemic risks from all but large-area burns, and even then it's mostly due to fluid loss which can be compensated for. (Yes, there are later risks due to loss-of-skin and skin graft surgery, but none of those complications try to have you pronounced dead you within a few hours of the spill.)
Thimerosal is a mercury compound used as a preservative in vaccinations [1].
1. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thiomersal
Sodium and Chlorine are both pretty nasty.
Why does it need to be safe to 'take into your body'? I'm not going to drink lead paint or the turpentine used to clean brushes either.
Likely for the same reason we rarely use lead paint anymore, or why micro plastics are a concern in bath products. Just for a couple of examples of products you don’t consume ending up in animal bodies.
Yes, tooth fillings.
"Dental amalgam is a mixture of metals, consisting of liquid (elemental) mercury and a powdered alloy composed of silver, tin, and copper. Approximately half (50%) of dental amalgam is elemental mercury by weight. The chemical properties of elemental mercury allow it to react with and bind together the silver/copper/tin alloy particles to form an amalgam."
https://www.fda.gov/medical-devices/dental-devices/dental-am....
Amalgam fillings do offgas tiny amounts of mercury. Of course, this is a controversial topic and there's a lot of misinformation around, so do your own research. Personally, I came to the conclusion that the one amalgam filling I have is ok but too many would cause potentially toxic buildup over a lifetime so I'll never get another.
Yes. As one example, arsenobetaine is an arsenic-containing compound that is naturally present in almost all fish that we consume. It is entirely harmless to humans in normal amounts, since we don't metabolize it into ordinary arsenic.
Sodium if ingested would very quickly kill you if the massive explosions in your mouth didn't hinder the ability to ingest it.
Chloride is also deadly in high enough concentrations (or rather, in non-trace concentrations), but we also use low amounts of it in pool cleaners.
Mix the two and you get salt.
A surprising number of dyes and pigments are very toxic. I have no idea if this is unusually toxic, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it’s the norm.
I remember Zara was once in the spotlight due to their clothes containing toxic dyes
There are carcinogenic ones used in red lipstick.
EPA thinks so
Its oral LD50 was tested to be more than 5000mg/kg according to Shepherd Color Company's MSDS for Blue 10G513 (as it is known commercially). That's well into "non-toxic" as categorized by the EPA. For perspective, that's more than ten times less toxic than caffeine.
So, probably pretty safe when used appropriately. I wouldn't go inhaling it, since any fine powder's not great for the lungs, but that shouldn't be news to anyone. Just wear your N95 when mixing dry pigments as you always should.
I think that's for the processed pigment though, what about during manufacturing?
Isn't LD50 only relevant to acute exposure?[0] Just because you can eat 5 grams of something and survive doesn't mean repeated exposure to it in smaller quantities or in other ways won't hurt you (obviously). E.g. acute inhalation of asbestos has no recorded mortality. I think I'm missing something in your post.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Median_lethal_dose
It's not the LD50 for Cobalt Blue, but the LD50 for soluble Cobalt salts is between 150 and 500 mg/kg and Cobalt toxicity seems to be a thing. But the LD50(rat) for cobalt blue is > 10000 mg/kg according to the MSDS I'm looking at. That doesn't sound toxic.
Wiki says this about cobalt: "it causes respiratory problems when inhaled. It also causes skin problems when touched; after nickel and chromium, cobalt is a major cause of contact dermatitis"
So for people looking for an example of something that's somewhat toxic, but much less toxic as a paint. Here you go, Cobalt Blue. The color this new can be substituted for. yeah the toxicities are different, but it's the same idea.
Dangerous pigments is old news to painters, and artists in general. Check out the book Artist Beware (Michael McCann). Pigments I used, and still use when I can get them, are the Cadmiums (red, yellow), flake white (lead oxide) and Naples yellow. All very poisonous.
A great influence on me as an artist, and a good friend, died prematurely almost certainly as a result of his exposure to dangerous materials. In his case, asbestos.
Isn't indium used everywhere in solder as a less toxic replacement for lead?
AFAIK only in specialised low-temp solder, like the one sold by Chip-Quik to desolder sensitive components.
That's Tin-Bismuth eutectic, forming a 99 C (a hair below boiling water) eutectic when mixed with lead.
Take a look for yourself: https://www.digikey.com/catalog/en/partgroup/chip-quik-indiu...
Yeah, but that's not for desoldering. It's for things like soldering heat sinks to flip-chip dies, or hermetic sealing cans for sensitive components.
I'm not surprised by them selling indium solder wire, but they offer all kinds of solder under that brand.
Oh, ok, thanks for the info.
Cobalt is used in some colors. Many oil paints are filled with things that can kill you in large doses. Bob Ross likely died from inhaling paint thinner fumes.
It just comes with the territory oddly enough...
I've bought several hundred tubes of paint in last 20 years. I've seen artists gravitating towards more expensive paints as a sign of better pigmentation which is completely misplaced. Pricing of pigments is largely a complex equation including marketing by paint manufacturers to pose Cadmiums and Chromiums as "premium" quality paints. The truth couldn't be farther from that. Modern synthetic pigments are superior, safer and have far better lightfastness than the Cadmiums and Chromiums. Perylene red is amazing. Mix it with a dash of Titanium white and you can get very close to the opacity of Cadmiums. Mix it with Zinc white and you've got a far more brilliant red than anything else. But, Artists' I've worked with tend to gullibly gravitating towards the more expensive == better philosophy. I found this hilarious when buying paint during my early days in art world.
The quality of paint is measured by several characteristics such as pigment load, lightfastness, opacity/transparency, tinting strength, etc. Not its scarcity in nature.
Very insightful. Will be interested to know of your preferred 12 colour palette.
I use a Yellow Ochre Light, Pthalo Blue, Titanium White, Zinc White, Transparent Oxide Red (for blocking), Pthalo Green and Perylene Red :)
Although, you can just use Richard Schmid's palette, replace all the toxic junk with modern pigments and you're good to go. The thing is to stick with the palette forever for many decades so that your paintings have a cohesive harmony.
Thanks. Only after you mentioned did I lookup Perylene Red, looks great.
I notice that the Windsor & Newton watercolour series has nothing called Perylene Red, but it has a nice looking colour named Perylene Maroon that seems similar.
See:
> In economics and consumer theory, a Giffen good is a product that people consume more of as the price rises and vice versa
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giffen_good
Thanks for educating me on this! It is super interesting that there is a formal theory behind it.
This is probably not an example of a Giffen good. Rather, it’s better categorized as a Veblen good. The increasing consumption of Giffen goods with higher prices is predicted by the standard rational-agent economic theory, and requires the good to be a dominant portion of a consumer’s expenditures. This condition is hard to satisfy, and is typically only found in situations where the price of a staple food increases. Veblen goods, on the other hand, are those that are consumed precisely because of their high price, and are not predicted by standard microeconomic theory.
Here are two articles about how this pigment was discovered:
https://www.npr.org/2016/07/16/485696248/a-chemist-accidenta...
https://www.bloomberg.com/features/2018-quest-for-billion-do...
This is an area that I know absolutely nothing about, so the notion that new pigments are being created is fascinating to me. I’ve never really considered pigments and the chemicals used to make all of these colors.
Consider getting the book "The Secret Lives of Colors." The book itself is a beautiful object and the contents are a great dive in to the history and chemistry of pigment and color.
https://g.co/kgs/Np4PF6
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=The+Secret+Lives+of+Colour&t=ffab&...
Check out this timeline of pigments through the ages. See how the industrial revolution multiplied the number of colors available.
http://www.webexhibits.org/pigments/intro/history.html
"From Egyptian wall paintings to the Venetian Renaissance, impressionism to digital images, Philip Ball tells the fascinating story of how art, chemistry, and technology have interacted throughout the ages to render the gorgeous hues we admire on our walls and in our museums."
Bright Earth: Art and the Invention of Color Paperback – Illustrated, April 15, 2003 https://www.amazon.com/Bright-Earth-Art-Invention-Color/dp/0...
https://www.philipball.co.uk/
I would love to see this color in person. I had not realized it was such an excellent IR reflector either, from an industrial perspective that should be a boon for IR lamp heating systems in terms of efficiency.
Phthalo Blue is more recent than 200 years; it was isolated in the early 20th century.
The article specifies as the first non organic pigment.
While that may be true, it does not make the headline any less inaccurate and clickbaity
"YInMn Blue’s appeal stems in part from its high opacity, which means you don’t need to apply much of it to get a good coating."
This! I've noticed that blue exterior house paint, even with an expensive primer, just doesn't cover very well. This stuff seems about 100 times too expensive for that application.
If I was working in a lab and my experiment turned a deep blue I'd say "cool!" and move on. I didn't know that discovering a new color was something meaningful.
I wonder who told these scientists "stop what you're doing you've just discovered a new pigment".
Do you have a chemistry background?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IG_Farben
Do you know what the name means?
I don’t get it, how would you even discover a pigment? How would you know what you’re looking at is novel?
I don’t get it, how would you even discover a pigment?
I suspect it starts with "this compound has a nice colour, how about its other properties?"
How would you know what you’re looking at is novel?
There are extensive lists of existing pigments.
Chemistry - either organic or inorganic. We already know what is responsible for the colors of molecules. So you can build new molecule or complex based on those principles and some of them turn out to be scientifically interesting or commercially valuable.
I think it's possible the discoverers looked at it and said they had never seen such a colour before artificially
Guessing if you’re a chemical engineer it’s one of those properties you’re keeping an eye out for?
> How would you know what you’re looking at is novel?
Pigments are chemicals. Chemist can use various techniques to analyse a sample and tell what is its composition. After that they search for it in the literature and if they find that the given chemical was not described previously then it is novel. That’s it.
> I don’t get it, how would you even discover a pigment?
The article answers this. “ Chemist Mas Subramanian and his team serendipitously came upon it while conducting experiments with rare earth elements as part of their work with semiconductors.”
That is to say they were experimenting and something turned out as blue. They didn’t expect this so they analyzed the sample and then did a literature search.
Read up just a little bit on art history and you'll get it.
It wasn't that long ago that a blue pigment—anything at all that was blue and that would be durable over time—was extraordinarily rare and valuable.
Indium is very rare. Used for transparent conductors on displays etc. Is it really worth it to use it in a slightly better blue? In other words: does its current price really reflect all the future use we could get from Indium?
Indium is comparable in abundance with gold, so it is indeed very rare.
Indium is completely irreplaceable in LED's, especially in the LED's used for lighting, and also in other important semiconductor devices, e.g. in the GaN transistors that are now used in the latest miniaturized power bricks.
Currently the largest quantity of indium is used for the transparent conductors required in all displays, from smartphones to TV's and monitors. There are alternatives for this use, but all have various disadvantages, e.g. a lower lifetime or a lower efficiency.
I agree that wasting indium, which is probably the element with the lowest known resources compared to the known future needs for it, to make something like pigments, where there are a lot of mostly equivalent alternatives, is a serious mistake.
I would say, do not underestimate the value of art. The article described an artist that made is own paint from the pigment. He painted a depiction of an ancient bird, its absolutely beautiful. This use was not a waste of resources and will in fact last much much longer than any screen made in 2021.
Its arguable that using precious resources for products that last less than 20 years, in many cases less than 5 years, is a true waste.
I agree that using such a pigment for a small number of art objects would certainly be justified, like also the use of gold in art objects or jewelry, instead of its more valuable technical uses, for which there are no alternatives, e.g. in protecting electrical contacts from corrosion or in semiconductor metallization.
However, if instead of using this pigment in a few valuable paintings, it would be used in a high number of ephemeral sketches done for practice, that would be a waste.
Nevertheless, the high price at which the pigment has been launched is good, because it will probably deter casual use.
>However, if instead of using this pigment in a few valuable paintings, it would be used in a high number of ephemeral sketches done for practice, that would be a waste.
Just like a high number of ephemeral smartphone screens would be a waste?
> The store sells the paint for $179.40 for just 40 ML. By comparison, the other structure acrylics it offers starting in sizes no smaller than 75 ML are available from just $8.70.
$4.485 per ML versus $0.116 per ML. That's a difference of almost 40x cost. I wonder how much of that is offset by how saturated/opaque the pigment is. Still, an incredibly expensive blue.
> Connecticut artist Michael Rothman got his hands on some Kremer YInMn blue pigment in 2019 and produced his own paint, “hand milling the dry material in acrylic emulsion resin,” he said.
I wonder what the difference in cost is for the dry pigment
These people really didnt think about how people are going to pronounce their pigment? YInMn - what a monster of a name. In the olden days at least people gave colors great names that were easy to prounounce and provided them personality. Ultramarine, prussian blue.. Even vantablack has a nice rhythm.
It's nice as techinical name, I guess, but I'd hope they have some better brand name they are going by.
I decided to pronounce it "Yelenmen"
The character after the Y in YInMn is an I (uppercase i), not an l.
One of the videos in the article has it as Yin Min.
It seems to me like it'd have a Chinese-like pronunciation, that is Yin Min.
Tangentially, as a non-native speaker, "ultramarine" has a fairly similar amount of information encoded in the name as "Yinmn"--pretty much zero. So, the two names ("ultramarine" vs "yinmn") are pretty much equivalent to eme, personally.
Goes to show that naming things "properly" is difficult (I suspect it's impossible actually).
Originally, "ultramarine" meant something like "imported merchandise", i.e. something brought from the other side (ultra-) of the sea (-marine).
It provided the information that this is a foreign pigment that must be better than the lower-quality pigments produced locally (e.g. azurite).
Crayola is calling the crayon made with this color "Bluetiful", does that help? Wikipedia also refers to it as "Oregon Blue, Mas Blue, or Yin Min Blue" so I think it will be commonly called something else.
Anyways, you're on HN, you know geeks shouldn't name things, but they do anyways. Think "XBox" as a perfect example.
Crayola's crayon isn't actually using the YInMn pigment.
Coming from a language with phonemic orthography it's pretty easy to pronounce.
I'll propose: Rare Blue.
Trying to reconcile "extremely high price" with "we want to paint buildings with this stuff". Clue?
Very expensive buildings? Relatively dilute paint? Agreed, it does seem like a disconnect.
Related from 2019: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20245672
Anyone here have suggestions for viewing this and other novel pigments?
You can see the blue pigment on an AMD Radeon Pro graphics card. https://www.amd.com/en/graphics/workstation-series
I kind of thought you were kidding, because nobody on earth cares what color their workstation/datacenter graphics card is... but indeed they are using YInMn blue: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMXS1A2uBeE And made a video about how cool they are for putting certain paint on a graphics card.
I will continue to be amused because people call Intel "team blue" and AMD "team red", but in this case AMD's product is blue.
> because nobody on earth cares what color their workstation/datacenter graphics card is
I think some HPC applications do actually have some aesthetics because the bean counters want to be able to look at their billion dollar datacenter and say "My datacenter is bigger/prettier than yours" rather than just having a black front panel.
> I kind of thought you were kidding, because nobody on earth cares what color their workstation/datacenter graphics card is...
I’m not sure if you’re joking here or something, but as it turns out, many people buy video cards to play video games, and many of them care about how their gaming device looks like. They install LEDs and stuff. It’s pretty cool.
Radeon Pro is the professional line, for workstation use cases (CAD, rendering, that sort of thing). They are not aimed at the consumer market, and AMD doesn't appear to paint their consumer cards blue.
True, but these are workstation cards, they're for GPGPU workloads or Rendering workstations for pro artist. You'd rarely if ever find them in a gaming PC (too expensive with no real benefit for gaming workloads).
There are other uses, too. AMD makes low profile (?) radeon pro cards like the WX2100 which are smaller and have lower power requirements than their consumer offerings.
I got a used one off eBay for my tower, mostly because I wanted something AMD for linux usage with as low heat emission as possible, but honestly I really like the look of that blue too :)
Even if I have a black boxy case with no fancy windows or anything else... Interesting to learn it's this neat pigment.
You might get some bargains on ebay for sure.
But straight up it would make no sense for a non professional workload. You could get a AMD 5500 XT 4GB GDDR6 (WX2100 is 2GB GDDR5) for a similar ball park in price with 5x the bandwidth and a lot more graphical horse power for a gaming workload. And if heat is the concern it would be trivial to underclock and undervolt to get it quite chilly.
You may have some special situation and have got a great deal but for the most part they should be of little interest to standard consumers.
Looking briefly at ebay, the 5500 XT goes for around 250-300 USD, while the WX2100 goes for around 50-70 USD.
And the 5500 XT has a TDP of 130 watts, vs 25 watts for the WX2100. The WX2100 is also smaller, and doesn't require additional power from the PSU, running entirely off the PCIe slot power.
Not that I'm saying it's great for gaming. But I'm running it on a IBM POWER processor which can't really play x86 games anyway, just open-source and java games (it can tank minecraft at 4k pretty nicely). It lacks an on-board accelerated GPU too, so going without isn't really an option.
I agree almost everyone should probably just get a better gaming card, but for the price this thing runs a 4k monitor great, has good video en/decoders, and a cool blue exterior ;)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/YInMn_Blue#Commercialization_a...
>AMD announced in July 2016 that the pigment would be used on new Radeon Pro WX and Pro SSG professional GPUs for the energy efficiency that stems from its near-infrared reflecting property
Except for cooling a hot thing, you want a pigment that absorbs and radiates a lot in the far infrared (ie. acts like a black body)
I was on the release event of those cards. All of that setup just for the punchline in the end: ”The first non-toxic blue”
The fact that it was said makes the amusement value even greater.
I was googling around, and apparently there are some shirts marketed as "yinmn blue":
https://www.scotch-soda.com/fi/en/men/shirts/long-sleeve-100...
I am somewhat dubious though if that is genuinely yinmn, but interesting nevertheless that they are marketing it as such.
One more thing for art forgers to worry about.