School kids prove EpiPens are poisonous in space

[Kyng]

https://www.livescience.com/elementary-s...never-knew

Elementary school students in Canada recently schooled NASA scientists when they discovered that life-saving EpiPens can turn poisonous when launched into space.

Students from St. Brother André School's Program for Gifted Learners (PGL) in Ottawa were studying the effects of cosmic radiation on epinephrine, the active ingredient found in EpiPens, an emergency treatment given during severe allergic reactions. NASA selected the students' experiment to be part of Cubes in Space(opens in new tab), its global STEM program geared specifically to school-age kids.

For the program, the 9- to 12-year-old students designed an experiment in which epinephrine samples were placed into tiny cubes and sent to the edge of space via either a high-altitude balloon or a rocket. Once back on Earth, researchers from the John L. Holmes Mass Spectrometry Facility at the University of Ottawa tested the samples and found that only 87% contained pure epinephrine, while the other 13% had been "transformed into extremely poisonous benzoic acid derivatives," according to a University of Ottawa statement.

---

Wow . I'm sure many of us have done fun science experiments at school - but it certainly isn't common for them to make new scientific discoveries !

Hopefully, this experience will have inspired some of them to take up science as a career once they become adults .

[ZandraJoi]

Wonder how this works if any astronaut needed something like this.

[SpookyZalost]

Wonder how this works if any astronaut needed something like this.

Well fortunately spacecraft are usually sterile environments but it's just never come up.

Better that this came up in an experiment than during an actual situation.

Now they need to figure out how to treat allergic reactions in space... primarily because once we start getting out there... who knows how our biology will react to alien biospheres and environments.

Just drives home the fact that Space Will Kill You.  If given the chance.

[Lurkerish Allsorts]

And in the latest edition of suspect popscience news a quote form the article:

The 'after' samples showed signs that the epinephrine reacted and decomposed," Mayer said. "In fact, no epinephrine was found in the 'after' EpiPen solution samples

But earlier

Once back on Earth, researchers from the John L. Holmes Mass Spectrometry Facility at the University of Ottawa tested the samples and found that only 87% contained pure epinephrine, while the other 13% had been "transformed into extremely poisonous benzoic acid derivatives," according to a University of Ottawa statement.

Which one is it? No epinephrine was found in all the samples, or 87% of the after samples contained pure epinephrine?

There is also the question: Were the cubes given the same radiation protection that space going craft, space stations, and space suits have? If not the study is fully bollocks as you are not fully reproducing the environment they would be present in, that would be like calling oxygen toxic or water deadly because under certain specific circumstances they are but not in what the general population would experience these things at on a day to day basis.