How much copper sulphate would you consume before you die

? Writing a murder mystery, Bob?  :-)
... or shall we read between the lines and scream "Get to a Doctor immediately if you drank it!"?

Consuming too much of anything at all will kill you. How much copper sulphate it takes would depend on whether it was diluted 1:1 or 10,000:1, your body weight & general health, whether it was a one-day accident or you feel you've been drinking it continuously through well pollution (polluting a well with root killer), etc., ad infinitum. Sorry, but abstract questions are usually impossible to answer; please try your best to post your actual situation and we'll try to help.
Thanks!

A. First, what is dilute? Second, it will depend on your body size and how strong an immune system you have. Third, it will depend on at what rate you ingest it. Forth, are you planning on suicide, if so, it will not be a pleasant way to go. Fifth, what was your real question?

A. Process: copper is attacked with sulfuric acid. Chemical formula: CuSO₄.5H₂O. Appearance: large blue obliquely angled crystals, soluble in water.

Copper content: 25.5%, LD50 Acute oral: >1,000 mg/kg in adult male rats. 1 gram per kilo of rat will kill 50% of the test rats. People will be similar. A 220 pound man will take about 100 grams to kill 50% more or less.

Since CuSO₄ is not an acute toxin it kills by gross chemical effects on membranes of the heavy metal copper it will have a similar LD50 in all mammals.

Solubility: very soluble in water 230 g/kg at 25°C, not very stable. When heated, copper sulphate loses its crystallisation water and becomes white, but regains its blue colour in the presence of even a minimum trace of humidity.

Formulation: neutralisation hard to obtain and to maintain, pH quite acid.

A. Dear Bob:

First of all, I have to express similar concerns over the nature of your question. If you or someone else has ingested this material, you need to consult your local poison control center and get it dealt with. On the other hand, you will find that soliciting this kind of information from any organization will be met with suspicion. For instance, one of the hats I wear is training for hazardous materials in the workplace and wanted to compare the lethal doses between the different types of alcohols (including drinking alcohol) in order to make a point about exposure. While I could easily find the information on isopropyl alcohol and ethanol (because it is published), I simply could not convince anybody to share the same information on drinking alcohol ... no matter what reason I gave them. I suppose this makes sense.

! The question is simply a question for knowledge, first you need to know how much of something will kill you in order to find a way to stop it from happening. People, don't think the worst of things because its an unusual question sometimes it is for the good.

We're not "thinking the worst", Richar. We're simply saying that a carefully defined, limited, purposeful question can often be answered with a paragraph or two as is appropriate to a public forum -- but explaining the complete human toxicology of copper would require book-length treatment, and we probably can't help with that.

Regards,

A. Hi Jules. To someone like myself with no medical qualifications, those symptoms sound unlikely, although vomiting sounds quite likely. But you really ought to get medical advice from doctors. Feel better.

Regards,

Hi Ted
Thank you for your response. I will ask my doctor.
Kind regards,
Jules

A. Hi Sara. Sorry that you resorted to that in a moment of despair. The world needs each one of us; no one else in this whole world can fill the void that you would leave.

But you must find someone locally with medical knowledge to monitor your situation -- nobody can offer a useful answer from this distance.

Regards,

Q. Dear ted, thank you for great sympathy but I cannot tell this to my parents or any relatives cause I did this for my boyfriend. Now I realize that I did wrong to myself actually but still I cannot tell anyone about that. I am afraid already ... so only you all are my hope for the best answer ... Still awaiting ...

A. Sorry Sara, but I do not have even a single day of medical training; I have no idea whatsoever about what should be done.

But you must have a relative or friend who can help you find a clinic without you telling them why you need help. Just tell them you are quite ill and aren't sure why (this is the truth, you don't know for sure) and you need help, revealing only to the clinic staff, who are sworn to secrecy, what you did. Please do it immediately.

Forget your boyfriend and your parents and your relatives ...

Regards,

A. I was just recently researching the toxicity of copper sulphate to figure out if a long-standing restriction on the use of the copper sulphate passivation test on stainless steel food equipment had any real justification. (I concluded it doesn't, given the quantities involved.)

The wikipedia page on copper sulphate has all the information you should need about how much is dangerous and what it will cause to happen to the body. Unfortunately it doesn't say anything about treatment.

You might go looking for a copper sulphate MSDS, that should be easy to find, though that probably focuses more on immediate first aid than on long-term treatment.

As I am also not a doctor, but I am a chemist, the only thing that comes to mind is chelation therapy. The wikipedia page on that even lists the chelation agent used for copper poisoning. However, it cautions that such things should be managed by a medical professional only.

A. Hi Matt. As Ray and myself just said, we have no medical training and cannot advise people knowledgeably.

But we do have a bit of science training and can advise you that, after you've seen the doctor if you're feeling poorly, you'll need to learn from your classes that "had some" will get you nowhere in science. Does "had" mean ate, drank, inhaled, injected, simply touched, or got it in your eye? Does "some" mean a pinhead quantity, or does it mean a good sized chunk of about 'x' grams? The quantity is super important! Good luck.

Regards,

A. Matt,
As Ted said, the method of exposure and quantity is important here.

You can look at the symptoms of ingesting too much copper sulphate (as previously mentioned, can be found on wikipedia and possibly on the safety data sheet) and see if any of it sounds like something you are experiencing.

If you feel fine and don't have any symptoms, it probably wasn't a large enough quantity to worry about.