Rare Compound Kills Chemist

HANOVER, N.H. (AP)

-- A Dartmouth College scientist whose specialty was the dangers of heavy metals died of mercury poisoning this week, 10 months after as little as a drop of a rare toxic compound apparently seeped through her rubber gloves.

Karen Wetterhahn, 48, had been hospitalized since January, when tests showed 80 times the lethal dose of mercury in her blood, a college investigation showed.

After she was diagnosed on Jan. 28, Wetterhahn told investigators she remembered spilling one to several drops of dimethylmercury in August, Chemistry Department Chairman John S. Winn said Tuesday.

After the diagnosis, Winn said Wetterhahn's attitude seemed to be: "I know what it is, I know what to do about it. I'm in a good place. I'm getting good care. Let's get on with it. "

Three weeks after she was diagnosed, she went into a coma that lasted until her death Sunday at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center in Lebanon. "Whether she knew the peril she was in at that time, I don't think we will ever know," Winn said.

Wetterhahn, a cancer researcher, was using the compound to examine the effects of toxic metals on human cells. At the time of the accident, she was studying how mercury prevents cells from repairing themselves, much like cancer does.

Wetterhahn had two episodes of nausea and vomiting about three months after the spill, but Winn said no one will ever know if the mercury caused them.

Mercury attacks the central nervous system well before the victim shows symptoms, and Wetterhahn began losing her balance and having trouble speaking and hearing in January, five months after the spill in the lab, Winn said.

Tests by an independent laboratory after the spill showed that the rare compound, first synthesized in 1841, can pass through rubber latex gloves quickly, and usually without damaging them, Winn said.

"It's not like a discolored spot appears, the glove rips open or smoke and fire comes out of the glove," he said. That finding has shocked other scientists.

"I think all of us here at the chemistry department and colleagues of hers in this area of research around the world have all been stunned that the gloves she was wearing at the time were not sufficient protection," Winn said. He said dimethylmercury looks like water but is three times as dense. More so than regular mercury, once standard in thermometers, the compound is attracted to the oil in human skin and is readily absorbed by the body.

In a letter published last month in the newsletter of the American Chemical Society, Dartmouth officials urged anyone working with the compound to wear neoprene gloves with long cuffs and to have their blood and urine tested frequently.

The U.S. Occupational Safety and Health Administration also is investigating and will have a report by October. A Dartmouth faculty member for 21 years, Wetterhahn had been dean of graduate studies and associate dean of the science faculty and was recognized internationally in her field, Winn said.

She also was a past officer of the American Association for Cancer Research and the author of more than 85 research papers. "For the scientific community, Karen's death represents the loss of one of its brightest lights," college President James Freedman said. Wetterhahn lived in Lyme with her husband, Leon Webb, and their two young children. Webb, a building contractor, said that despite working extremely long hours, his wife was outgoing and had a keen sense of humor.

"I never heard her say anything bad about anyone," Webb said. "She could have a conversation with anyone -- the president of the United States or a bum on the street. " Dartmouth officials said they only found one other report of a researcher dying from dimethylmercury poisoning in this century -- a Czechoslovakian scientist in 1971.

Winn said perhaps 100 laboratories worldwide work with dimethylmercury. "One of our concerns is that what we have learned here become known," he said. "Another of our concerns is that it not be too well-known -- because, if you think about the insidious nature of this compound, it has nefarious uses in the hands and minds of some deranged person. "

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