Elementary schoolers prove EpiPens become toxic in space | Hacker News Reader

Elementary schoolers prove EpiPens become toxic in space

livescience.com

26 pointsgeox25 comments

> Elementary school students in Canada recently schooled NASA scientists when they discovered that life-saving EpiPens can turn poisonous when launched into space.

No. Elementary school students did not discover this. They just asked a question to university researchers ("Do EpiPens work in space?"), and I'd bet that their science teacher played a huge role in coming up with that question, or at least filtering out all the other ideas. Then university researchers did all the experimental design and analysis. Read the actual press release: https://www.uottawa.ca/about-us/media/news/useless-space-uot...

But the headline! What will become of the headline?

The article quotes seem inconsistent:

"University of Ottawa tested the samples and found that only 87% contained pure epinephrine, while the other 13% had been 'transformed into extremely poisonous benzoic acid derivatives'"

against

"In fact, no epinephrine was found in the 'after' EpiPen solution samples"

If it's the former, you probably want to use a different EpiPen if you have a choice, but it might still save your life, whereas if it's the latter it's completely useless.

Also they were only flown under a high altitude balloon or on a sounding rocket, so probably didn't get a very high dose of radiation for very long. If you're a pilot and carry an EpiPen on many long-haul flights, wont your EpiPen will get similar exposure?

I believe they are saying that any of the epipens that were turned were turned completely.

Like, there wasn't an epipen with 87% epinephrine that came back to earth.

Yes, you could read it that way too. If the results are binary like that, it seems like it would need some form of chain reaction to convert all the epinephrine in 13% of the samples, leaving pure ephinephrine in the others.

The quotes are about different experimental conditions: 1) pure epinephrine (which returned only 87% pure) and 2) EpiPen solution (which starts out with less than 100% epinephrine and apparently returned with an amount below the detection threshold)

Probably some other ingredient of the EpiPen solution reacted with the epinephrine, causing it to degrade faster than the pure stuff.

Looks like the ISS crews could be in trouble if there is an invasion of space bees.

I’m sure the lawyers are already salivating at the class-action suit as this proves they weren’t properly protected from the space bees.

People on hn hate jokes

There is definitely an element on hn that seems to have no sense of humor.

I'm curious what these "extremely poisonous benzoic acid derivatives" are. Benzoic acid itself is not very poisonous to humans at all.

Epinephrine goes bad on earth too. Its not a very stable molecule.

Do you know, does that turn into benzoic acid on the ground too, or does it need those high-energy rays to convince them? (ie should old epipens be considered potentially dangerous due to benzoic acid)

Also, do you know how fast it goes bad (on the ground)? The pens have a best-before-date of about a year, often less, and I've always thought that was a method of increasing sales.

You'd rather ask a stranger on an Internet forum than trust the information on the packaging of your medicine? And still use that medicine?

Most medicine is efficacious long after it’s use by date

79.5% of statistics is false. (82.9% on the Internet.)

Hmm, isn't this equivalent to finding out: Almost anything _unshielded_ and exposed to radiation will will become poisonous ?

I don't think that's a supportable claim based only on this finding. It depends on the substance and how it reacts to irradiation. Into which compounds does it degrade? Does water become poisonous? Air?

1. They didn't go into space. They went on a high altitude balloon.

2. If this were actually true, people's epipens would be getting destroyed in transport whenever people fly on aircraft. There's even cosmic radiation on the ground.

3. Maybe don't automatically trust elementary schoolers to do good science.

>Maybe don't automatically trust elementary schoolers to do good science.

We obviously need to get other elementary schoolers to perform a peer review.

I think you're being a little bit hard on them...

There's no single definition of what we consider space. Some types of high-altitude balloons can easily take you to the edge of what most people consider space, which is at 100km above sea level. Or around ten times the distance from earth than your average commercial airplane.

You're making a lot of assumptions on your second point. How do you know that EpiPens won't degrade when flying? There are some conflicting statements in the article, but it seems like you could make a good case for that assumption, based on their findings. If radiation from space transforms epinephrine we probably want to know about it so we can adjust recommendations for storage.

> Some types of high-altitude balloons can easily take you to the edge of what most people consider space, which is at 100km above sea level. Or around ten times the distance from earth than your average commercial airplane.

It's 18-37km for balloons, with the record being 53km. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_balloon

In the end, any discussion on this turned rough the moment the article started with 'Elementary school students in Canada recently schooled NASA scientists'. It makes everything suddenly a students vs scientists thing, and the details in the article are lacking or inconsistent.

In my eyes, it should just be removed from Hacker News. We don't need this clickbait here.

100,000 ft is common for a high altitude balloon, but 100km is too high. The world record for an uncrewed balloon is around 50km.

https://www.space.com/41791-giant-nasa-balloon-big-60-breaks... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record#Uncrewe...

Evidence against Epi-Pens degrading when flying: Planes often have onboard Epi-Pens that go through thousands of flights and still work.

Are you sure the problem isn’t that the reporting was also done by elementary schoolers?

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