Thursday 18 June 2015

Careers: Canadian Coast Guard

 
 
A FEILD IN CHEMISTRY
 
 




The Canadian Coast Guard College offer two programs. Marine Navigation and Marine Engineering. Marine Engineering's job is to keep everyone safe and the vessel running smoothly. They are responsible for operating and maintaining the machinery below the deck, this includes; pumps, fueling transfer systems, hydraulic and cooling systems, vapour circuits, water treatment systems and compressed air circuits. The are the crew that make such a huge ship run flawlessly.
 
This career stand outs for me because I have chosen to pursue it. I have gone though the process of applying and getting everything they are looking for in check. This school is looking for the best of the best seeing as it is linked to the government. I have high hopes for everything in the future and can not wait to see what this career may bring.

Monday 15 June 2015

Size and Dosage

 
 
When looking at the dosage of drugs and chemotherapy patients only two things are looked at. The drug itself and how much is needed.

Article: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2375329/

The "normal" procedure a patient will go through when needing treatment for chemotherapy is the right dosage. This article states that some were just looking at one big thing, the person's body surface area. Then they move to the metabolic rate and then the blood flow. The reason that the size of the body was being used was because the maximum tolerance was scaled to area and the toxic doses were less consistent when body weight was used to normalise it.

Gurney, said that instead of looking at only those thing that they should also be looking at the activity of drug metabolising enzymes and transporters for genetic reasons. Then the impaired organ function due to either disease or prior therapy. 

Someone that has had no experience in the medical field, I believe that both theories are valid. That when someone's life depends on the size of the dosage it should not just consider the size of them because the insides are different for everyone. That doesn't mean that the size cannot affect the dosage but it should not alone decide. Do you think it should just be directly correlated to size of the person?

Cyanide in Mining

 
 
 
 
The role of cyanide in mining is to separate gold from ore. It is used in diluted forms and cause erosion of ore. In large portions cyanide can be very toxic but with proper management and disposal, it will minimize the damage.
 
 
Cyanide is a triple bonded carbon and nitrogen. It occurs naturally or can be man-made in various forms. It is in everyday things in small amounts such as table salt, pits of fruit like; plums and apricots but this natural chemical is also used in the mining industry. It has been used for more than 120 years and has used less than 20% of the global production. Cyanide is one of the safer choices seeing as the other opinion is to use liquid mercury. 90% of Canada's gold is extracted from the use of cyanide.
 
Even though in large doses cyanide is toxic, it is said to be strictly regulated for worldwide protection of people, animals, and aquatic environment. This still does not change the fact that cyanide is fatal. It drops the amount of oxygen getting into the body which causes the feeling of being suffocated. 15 years ago there was a spill of cyanide in water, in Romania. The water was contaminated due to a faulty dam. It cause damage to the aquatic life such as fish and their environment but no humans were killed. The best part of cyanide is that the initial damage can be brutal but within 4-5 days after the water has past, life will start to re-grown.
 
To me cyanide doesn't seem like the best option but doesn't seem like the worst either, any thought on what mining industries can do differently either with chemicals or methods?

Affects of Perfume

 
Are perfumes really what they say to be? After looking through an article about the
effects of fragrances and what they can do I'm not sure if I want to use them again.
 
 
It says that normal perfume has up to 3000 chemicals and dozens of complex mixtures. Even the so called "scent free" fragrances and deodorants aren't actually scent free, they will have even more chemicals then your leading fragrances! This is because they will have to put in masking agents to cover up the scent. To add on top of all that, thousands of these chemicals haven't been tested for toxics, alone or in a combination. This maybe why someone get irritations or allergies when wearing or near certain perfumes.
 
The number one chemical that is being used in perfumes, due to its long lasting and cheap qualities, would be diethyl phthalate also known as DEP. With this cheap chemicals comes the repercussions on hormones. The hormones are effected in both male and female, showing early stages of puberty in girls and low sperm count in boys. It can also affect the development of male fetus, if the mother was exposed during her pregnancy. Another thing that was mentioned in this article was the study done with asthmatics. That nearly 3 out of 4 individuals were more prone to attacks than normal. This also points to suggest that exposure to these chemicals such as DEP can aggravate asthma and even develop it in young children.
 
Personally being someone with asthma I have noticed which ones have worsen my conditions or have made it hard to breath. I have always used natural products and have stayed away from the ones that make it unbearable. But do you think that these products should be on the shelve if they can cause such damage to our health?