Phosphorus

Art,

Thank you for this bit of Chemistry education. Your erudition is appreciated! As an engineering student, I studied chemistry for one year in college and had little or no application for it during my career. However, in recent years, and as my interests have evolved, I have come to have a much greater appreciation for the subject - by virtue of environmental, dietary and medical interests. Perhaps the hobby needs a phosphorus-carrying tank car model...

MELGAR

MELGAR: Thank You for your kind words! It is the added phosphates that are largely unnecessary in our food supply, since all protein-rich foods, such as meats and beans, contain naturally occurring phosphates, which serve as nutrients for healthy bone metabolism. And, as I stated above, there are more natural compounds such as ascorbates (Vitamin C family) and tocopherols (Vitamin E family), as well as other time-tested compounds that can be added to the packaging materials, which do not require ingestion of the same. 

The flavor-enhancing phosphates are another matter, and even more arbitrary and controversial, according to many renal dieticians. Again, there are more natural compounds that would serve the same purpose. Even folks with normal kidney function can consume too many phosphates.

I agree that Lionel or MTH should consider making a model of this commodity-specific railcar (DOT 111, non-pressure tank car for white phosphorus) And maybe Menard's could do an Inophos Plant? In the interest of full disclosure, my photo is a stock photo downloaded from the internet. I will try to get an actual photo of the car, spotted on the CSX lead tracks to the plant, tomorrow and post it. Unfortunately, by late this afternoon, this car had already been switched into the plant unloading siding and is not in a position to be photographed.

Art, I saw the title, and had to read this, as I just joined you in the phosphorus boat this week. I've been on dialysis for about a year and a half now, but still have some residual kidney function, to the point where I was able to stay off binders. However, I flunked my last test and the retest wasn't any better. Starting with a simple Tums or two when I do consume meals with heavy phosphorus content. Trying to stay off the prescription stuff for as long as possible.

I've been paying attention to food and beverage labels, since starting, and all but given up cola as a results. Meats and dairy naturally contain phosphorus without additives, and have to be watched. In spite of all the meetings with the dietician, I did have hot dogs last night, but taking a Tums with them was a new twist for me. I see bacon in my future this weekend, and need to bring them along.

As for the train angle of this topic, I would gladly buy cars if they were produced in scale. The plant wouldn't really fit on my layout, but it sounds cool.

BTW, I'm at dialysis, running as I type this. I bring my laptop every session, to pass the four hours, three times a week.  

O.K.............I'll be a bit o' a smart guy here...........I L U V  hotdogs, and here is another reason why!  And Polish sausage!  And Italian sausage!  Und Wurst/Brats!

Jawol!

BB4005: I am also on dialysis as I type this and have about an hour to go. At my stage of kidney failure (14 years on dialysis), I use an iron-based medication with the brand name of Velphoro (sucro-ferric oxyhydroxide) 500mg BID (2X daily). It is a large chewable, kind-of-berry flavored tablet, that is not too unpleasant, the main side effect being a dark stool. Once you graduate from TUMs, there are several choices of meds, which your nephrologist can advise you about. The problem with TUMs is eventually the calcium carbonate they contain will excessively raise your serum calcium level. Hang in there!

RE: HOT dogs: Folks with normal kidney function do not usually need to worry about phosphate consumption, but, as with all things in life, moderation is always a good thing!

The forum is a great way to pass the time. Thanks for all the info, 14 years is a long time. I should live so long. If I said cramp, could you relate? My left ankle is turning into a pretzel as we speak. Owwwww. Pulling 5 today, but that's not unusual for me. I'm a big guy.

Over-pulling fluid (ultra-filtration) is the usual cause of cramping, Immediate remedies are an infusion of normal saline or stopping the UF pull for a few minutes. You may need to adjust your dry weight. If your BP is not too low, sitting up in the chair while pressing your feet on the floor sometimes helps. Check with your patient care tech or nurse!

Try to keep your fluid gain less than 3 kg between treatments if possible. Fluid intake control is the most difficult thing for most dialysis patients. Talk to your center's dietitian for some helpful hints!

I may be a short timer compared to you Art, but I know all those tricks. Maybe I'm just a little too tough for my own good. Beside, the weekend is here, and I rather not start out behind the 8 ball. I'm a bit of a heavy drinker (WATER).  Done in 5 minutes. I'll check back when I get home.

Great information here that all of us can benefit from.  We all need to watch what we eat more carefully.  Well, in my own case, anyway since I love all sorts of hot dogs/ sausages/bacon.  I had heard that the the Hebrew National dogs were the healthiest of the major brands and now I understand the science of it.  Thanks

In the right amount, does phosphorus glow in the dark?

There are at least TEN different types or allotropes of phosphorus, the most commom being red, black and white. The white form reacts with oxygen to ignite, and must be kept under water or in an oxygen-free container. They all have differing physical properties.

Dominic Mazoch posted:

In the right amount, does phosphorus glow in the dark?

I think that would be the WRONG amount. Actually, in certain forms, it does.

Art, I know where the cramps came from. I came in 0.4 below dry weight. I'm working on not over drinking, but with a weight slightly north of 150 kilos, on a percentage basis 5 isn't horribly out of line, though 4 would be more comfortable. We have a guy up around 200 kilos. He can pull 6 or more. I'm not going there.

BP was good today, in spite of going under dry. Top number over 100, standing, is good to drive home. If not, drink it or infuse it til the numbers are OK.

Food, water and nap are SOP post dialysis.

Elliot: Have a GREAT weekend!

I was just going to say, in its native form white phosphorus reacts with oxygen, it was used in particularly ugly military weapons whose shrapnel would do all kinds of horrible damage, the doctors who had to treat those wounds cursed whoever created them. 

There are a lot of things travelling on trains you can wonder about in our food supply, the tank cars carrying corn syrup (ie high fructose corn syrup), the corn feed used to fatten up beef rapidly and creating cheap, unhealthy beef, the insecticides and herbicides that sadly infect a lot of the food we eat (do a web search on 'produce dirty dozen', for the top 12 produce items that contain the most of these wonderful chemicals, many of them organic compounds that are known carcinogens, organo phosphates are especially bad news), the list goes on.....

Hebrew National hot dogs aren't necessarily that healthy, they are processed with nitrates. If you want to try a healthy hot dog, try the Thorn Apple Valley brand hot dogs, they don't use the nitrates standard hot dogs use and they are made from organic, grass fed beef, and they taste pretty darn good, too (and they aren't any more expensive than Hebrew National hot dogs are). 

Phil McCaig posted:

Great information here that all of us can benefit from.  We all need to watch what we eat more carefully.  Well, in my own case, anyway since I love all sorts of hot dogs/ sausages/bacon.  I had heard that the the Hebrew National dogs were the healthiest of the major brands and now I understand the science of it.  Thanks

Beyond phosphorus, there are other additives in hot dogs that Hebrew National doesn't use. That's a major selling point for them. We'll turn you normal guys into label readers yet.

Tinplate Art posted:

Elliot: Have a GREAT weekend!

Thanks Art. You too. I happen to have a layout tour to go on tomorrow.

To return to my main point concerning the transportation of a dangerous  chemical element like white phosphorus, once an incidious incendiary war weapon, I would point out the obvious: if we did not have these unnecessary phosphate food additives, we would NOT have to transport such a dangerous raw material in the first place! The tank car in question has a special DOT designation due to the specific material it will contain, which would burst into flames if ruptured in an accident, however nice a model it would make!

Tinplate Art posted:

To return to my main point concerning the transportation of a dangerous  chemical element like white phosphorus, once an incidious incendiary war weapon, I would point out the obvious: if we did not have these unnecessary phosphate food additives, we would NOT have to transport such a dangerous raw material in the first place! The tank car in question has a special DOT designation due to the specific material it will contain, which would burst into flames if ruptured in an accident, however nice a model it would make!

Phosphorus is used in much more than evil food additives or weapons:

http://www.chem4kids.com/files...ments/015_speak.html

Very true, but my focus was on the food additives. Phosphates are more useful in other applications as you point out above.

Most medical stuff is in the metric system.

1 kg = 2.2 lbs.

1 liter = 1.1 quart.

1 liter pure water is 1 kg of weight.

Hence if one has 3 kg of water removed, that is 3 ltrs, or 3.3 quarts.  And over 6.5 pounds taken off over 3 to 4 hours.  A lot happening to the body over a short period of time.

Used to be a paramedic who took people to and from treatments.

Now WAY before this post, I stopped eating processed meats.  Lost weight, and feel better.

DOMINIC: Pulling 3-4 kg of fluid over a four-hour period creates a tissue fluid imbalance that may result in muscle cramping. Relatively new dialysis patients usually require a period of adjustment that may last several months or more. After 14 years, I have learned to control my fluid intake for my dry weight, currently 76.5 kg. A few years ago, I once miscalculated my dry weight and experienced flash pulmonary edema, which required respiratory support, as well as pulling 3.5 kg, 2.5 kg and 1.5 kg over three consecutive days to regain my proper dry weight. A very scary experience I would not wish to repeat!

MANY THANKS to all responders  on this thread for the additional information! Again my goal was to inform about the largely unnecessary food additive phosphates, which admittedly, affect dialysis patients to a greater degree than the general population. Also, my example of a phosphate additive free hot dog was NOT an encouragement to eat hot dogs of any kind, which are almost always loaded with fats, nitrites, and other unwholesome chemicals! Finally, my discovery of the specialized phosphorus carrying chemical tank car prompted me to want to share it on the forum.

This has been a great thread to read.  Sorry for those of you forced onto dialysis.  My bed friend's wife was 100% dependent upon it and when the center she was being treated at switched to machines that had a scale built in I had to wonder how they could control the process if she was reading a book, putting it down, picking up her purse to look for a snack, putting the purse down or picking up her book again maybe with the purse still in her lap all the while having the treatment going on.   And I had to wonder about the technicians in that center and whether they had any clue. 

Where I do my dialysis, we just weigh in and weigh out, pre and post, not during. I never eat or drink while running, in order to keep my weight accurate. I carry my laptop with me every day, but it never figures into my weight, because it never gets on the scale.

I don't really see how a dialysis machine could have a scale built in. What it does have is an accurate way of measuring the fluid being removed, and the mass of the fluid is easily calculated. The beauty of the metric system, the conversions are in a previous post above.

When I'm running, the girls just set the machine for the amount of fluid to be pulled. For me, it's 4 to 5 Kilos per session. The amount is based on my weight coming in versus my known dry weight.

The trouble with weekends is you have two off days to recover from, instead of just one, on Mondays. Sometimes I don't quite make it back to dry, but by the end of the Wednesday session, I'm back in the zone.

It gets tricky if I put on real weight from eating, because we have to find a new dry weight, and that can be uncomfortable because cramping is very likely.

Elliot has explained it well: Weigh in (kilograms) and weigh out (kilograms), pre and post treatment. My clinic measures hemoglobin every week,  serum calcium and phosphorus and BUN clearance once a month, and a complete lab panel once a month. Our hearts and lungs are checked pre and post treatment, as well as our body temperature. The BUN clearance depends on a number of variables: the nature of the access stick, the size of the dialyzer, the time on the machine, the access flow rate, the blood flow rate through the machine, and the health of the access itself. Any major issue or deviation with these parameters will affect the BUN clearance. BUN is blood urea nitrogen, which derives from the breakdown of ingested proteins (amino acids) which are nitrogenous compounds. Urea, the primary breakdown product of these amino acids, is removed by healthy functioning kidneys, but whose buildup becomes toxic in the bloodstream of patients with kidney failure, and must be removed by dialysis. The better the clearance, the better you feel. The dialyzer or artificial kidney, is an osmotic membrane and NOT a filter, and it removes the urea, potassium and phosphorus from the blood which flows through one side, while the dialysate flows through the other side of the membrane and carries these unwanted compounds away. Blood molecules are too large to pass through the membrane so there is no loss of blood. The dialysate is a blend of reverse osmosis purified water, sodium bicarbonate and acetic acid. Another function of the kidney machine is called ultra filtration, and it removes the excess fluid from the blood and the surrounding tissues. It can be turned on or off independent of the blood cleaning process in the event of cramping or over-pulling of fluid.

And a connection to trains:  is not urea the same chemical that is used in DEF aftertreatment in some diesels to bring them into Tier 4 compliance?

Interesting - never heard of that use. It is also used as a fertilizer, being a source of nitrogen. The synthesis of urea was the beginning of modern organic chemistry. Friedrich Wohler was the first chemist to synthesize urea from inorganic agents, and not from organic tissue. Another use is as an effective snow/ice melting agent which does not damage concrete like salt does.