Death By Chewing Gum

From the title of this post, you might think that choking was the explanation. Not so. According to Fox News, a chemistry student in the Ukraine died when the gum he was chewing exploded and blew off his jaw. Friends said that the young man often dipped his gum in citric acid to add flavor. This time he apparently mistook an explosive for his usual flavor enhancer.

The article did not identify the compound, but ,as a former chem teacher, my first guess would be picric acid. That stuff becomes very unstable when it has been on the shelf and dried out. I actually found a jar of it that had been around for who knows how long when we were moving our lab supplies into a new building. We had it removed and destroyed by the HAZMAT squad. As luck would have it, a Cleveland TV crew was there that day filming a story about our football team and their playoff run. They saw the HAZMAT truck and that story ended up on the evening news also. My claim to fame was being identified as "an alert science teacher".

If this student was studying chemistry, he should not have made such a deadly mistake.

The picture below shows the results of a picric acid explosion in England in 1887. This substance was used in the manufacture of dyes.


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