Talk:Brodifacoum

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[edit] Pharmacology

I suggest to change the section "Pharmacology" to "Toxicology". Reason: brodifacoum is used only in biocidal (rodenticidal) context, it has no pharmacologic relevance other than its toxicity. Since the only use of it is that of a poison per se, it is appropriate to discuss its dynamics and kinetics in organism as toxodynamics and toxokinetics, forming toxicology of the substance.

I therefore change the name of the section to "Toxicology".

I also add some toxicological values (half-life, LD₅₀ values, LC₅₀ value, estimated fatal dose for a human) from the sources quoted ( http://www.inchem.org/ ). --84.163.124.102 00:09, 8 October 2006 (UTC)

Excellent! Great stuff. I do wonder about this statement though (which I edited for clarity): "Dehydrated bodies also dry out more readily, possibly leaving an odorless, mummified carcass." Does anyone know about this? Is the dehydration caused by brodifacoum really significant enough to affect the manner of decomposition? It would be great to have a reference to back this up. Cheers -- FirstPrinciples 08:54, 18 October 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I mailed a producer of a 2nd gen. anticoagulant rodenticide bait (specifically, difethialone baits, not brodifacoum, but difethialone and brodifacoum are very closely akin), that claims the drying-mummification in their product prospects and they mailed me back:

"Rückfragen beim Hersteller haben ergeben, dass die Erkenntnis des schnellen Eintrocknens der Tiere auf Anwendungsbeobachtungen beruht und abhängig von den äußeren Bedingungen zu sehen ist."
which means
"A query by manufacturer brought, that the knowledge of fast drying of the animals [animal corpses] is based on application observations, and is seen dependant on external conditions".
So there are no real scientific observations/studies of this phenomenon yet, or I found none of the kind. I have thus no objections against removing the claim from the article, if it interferes somehow with the NPOW or objectivity of the article.--Spiperon 18:35, 25 October 2006 (UTC)

Well, in fact, most 2nd generation anticoagulants (most pronounced is this mummification by bromadiolone, brodifacoum and difethialone) cause dehydration (which is caused by the hypovolemia and capillary damage, leading to blood/plasma leakage and subsequent intesticial fluid compensation of progressive hypovolemia, and if the rodent doesn't drink water copiously, the dehydration thus obtained is quite significant and progressive; with damaged, leaking capillaries, the whole body becomes "leaking" and fast-drying in dry air) as far as I know, that results to prone drying of the carcass, as long as the surroundings are dry, not moist.

I observed this also in practice, when I used difethialone and brodifacoum baits against rats and mice, I found after some weeks, by cleanup of the area where rodents were active prior to baiting, multiple dry carcasses, with no signs of decay. The bodies were just like dryied in an exsiccator, perfectly conserved. When I first observed this, I was surprised, because the use of zinc phosphide or warfarin resulted often to decaying, badly smelling bodies all over the place. I think, that an association of an anticoagulant with an antibiotic (sulfaquinoxaline) results also to more likely dry-mummification, because of the reduction of the biggest internal reservoir of the bacteria -- the intestinal microflora. But I don't have any relevant scientific sources to support this thesis yet. Only claims supporting this I found so far are in descriptions of the rodenticidal products containing 2nd gen. anticoagulants by their manufacturers, in german. In general, claims of manufacturers are not reliable source of objective information in regard to its necessary bias, but my observations support them, so I simply accept it.--Spiperon 13:56, 18 October 2006 (UTC)