I did not intend to cause alarm. I was basically not serious, but I did err.
 I am not afraid of potassium or chlorides and know that they are essential to life, as is cobalt, chromium, and other elements which in excess can cause harm. I am BTW also against the lead-free electronics hysteria. I know that people get unnecessarily concerned about the effects of chemicals when they read reports. I trust that TechNet members are not as alarmist as the general population.
I truthfully admit the mistake I made was that I thought potassium cyanide was used for lethal injection not KCl, and thought the news story got it wrong. Having had the mechanism pointed out to me, understand what is going on with potassium and the heart. Unfortunately, I know more than I wish to about heart function, as my son died from heart failure while awaiting a heart transplant.

-----Original Message-----
From: Joe Fjelstad [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: Monday, October 07, 2002 3:43 PM
Subject: Re: Lethal Potassium Chloride OT


Hi Tim, 

Don't know if you are serious or not... 

Greg's comments are on target in that it is normally injected. 

It should be noted that if you did not have any potassium chloride in your body you would also likely be dead. It is a vital electrolyte 

Interesting also to note that Ingesting a half kilo of sodium chloride was a favored method of suicide in China in centuries past. 

Seriously, we need to be careful how we use and disperse such reports. Some people actually take them to heart and believe them and cause the industry significant grief. 

Lead-free is a good case in point, where people have equated lead in electronic solder with lead in paint and gasoline. There is NO evidence that lead in solder is a risk to human health but well meaning but poorly informed people have been running around asserting the dangers lead in solder without any direct scientific evidence of any harm to show the world. 

If some folks read the article wrong, the next stop might be... Potassium Free electronics    

(Actually I think most customers will welcome that one for functional reasons but if the marketing folks get a hold of it...   ;-) 

Kind regards, 
Joe   --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Technet Mail List provided as a free service by IPC using LISTSERV 1.8e To unsubscribe, send a message to [log in to unmask] with following text in the BODY (NOT the subject field): SIGNOFF Technet To temporarily halt or (re-start) delivery of Technet send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet NOMAIL or (MAIL) To receive ONE mailing per day of all the posts: send e-mail to [log in to unmask]: SET Technet Digest Search the archives of previous posts at: http://listserv.ipc.org/archives Please visit IPC web site http://www.ipc.org/html/forum.htm for additional information, or contact Keach Sasamori at [log in to unmask] or 847-509-9700 ext.5315 --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 


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