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Worldwide Shortage of Barium
New submitter redhat_redneck writes "The U.S. and Canada has been experiencing a shortage of barium sulfate, which is used as contrast for upper and lower GI studies. It has reached the point where doctors are being asked not to order these exams except in emergencies, and some exams are being cancelled. Here's the letter that's been put out by the manufacturer. The longer this drags on, the more serious this issue becomes, eventually impacting patients and healthcare providers in both cost and quality of care. Some sources point to a dramatic drop in Chinese production. In their defense, it seems China is changing safety regulations. Medical use only make a fraction of the uses of barium sulfate, but it's going to be disproportionately affected by this shortage. We can't go back to our old contrast Thorotrast; it causes cancer. Does anyone know of alternatives to barium?"
1. Use Thorotrast.
2. People get cancer and die.
3. Then you Barium...
The icky-factor aside, Barium is an element does not vanish and can certainly be sterilized to any degree desired. So, why do they apparently not recycle the stuff?
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Gastrografin and Ultravist. No reason to defer these examinations.
Of course Slashdot readers are supposed to get it.
Contrast is what it says. It's there to make whatever you want investigate stand out from the rest observe it. For instance to make blood vessels easier to see. (Now I don't know whatever this is x-ray, MR, ultra-sound or whatever.) My english isn't good enough to know what GI is (gut-ingestion?) but I guess it's the stuff from the throat to the ass.
the majority of barium sulfate used world wide is used in drilling fluids for oil well drilling. not exactly a venue for recycling. the medically-used barium sulfate is consumed with food or drink, or is squirted up your ass... also not exactly a venue for recycling... at least not in this day and age. some day, maybe, on that martian colony where *everything* is recycled... but not today.
What about recycling? I mean even if it degrades to something else because of radioactivity, there's no reason not to revert that process and use solar energy to do it.
Barium sulfate is not radioactive.
It's very insoluble in water, which is why it's so useful as a contrast agent; it's very heavy (thus, radio opaque) but insoluble so it doesn't have toxic effects.
Recovering it would be a case of waiting for the patient to shit it out. Perhaps hook all of the hospital toilets to a reclamation system. I figure the cost of reclaiming the amount used in a typical X-ray study is just not a cost effective thing to do.
Other countries will ramp up production. It will just take time.
Apparently due to increased safety regulations being adhered to in Chinese mines. Damned commies! they'll have unions next!
The last time (Last Month, 19th) I got my B12 Injection I was told there is a Nationwide shortage of B12 used for Injections also. It was confirmed when I tried to refill my prescription at some local Pharmacy's. Thankfully I still have some left in my Vial, but those of you that don't and need this, you can be prescribed a Pill that will do the job, though not as good, until production picks up if it hasn't already.
Perhaps hook all of the hospital toilets to a reclamation system.
. Or just ask the patient to take his next dump in a plastic bag...
10 ?"Hello World" life was simple then
what GI is (gut-ingestion?) but I guess it's the stuff from the throat to the ass.
Gastrointestinal, your guess is correct: mouth-esophagus-stomach-intestines-anus. It's basically one continuous external surface inside the body.
GI stands for Gastro-Intestinal, as in the eponymous tract. You are not as much of a smartass as you think you are.
I think the medical profession is wasteful if they are not reusing barium on-site!
When penicillin was very new and little of it was available during and immediately after WW2, the urine of penicillin-treated patients was collected and distilled, so the penicillin could be saved and re-used several times over.
I don't see a problem with doing the same by purifying barium from patients' stool, expect the disgusting aspect. However, medical professionals must have a tolerance for disgust, else they would be not able to do their work.
It's not the bodies of the medical professionals that the recycled barium has to go in to, so I assume they'll be fine with it.
Barium Sulfate is also HUGELY important in oil well drilling mud.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drilling_fluid#Composition_of_drilling_mud
China putting a crimp on drilling mud could have some interesting effects, I'm sure. What makes little sense is the complaining about a shortage in hospitals, where a dose is less then an ounce, when oil drillers are pumping the stuff into the ground by the ton...daily...all over the world. Unless of course somebody wants us to get excited about China stepping on the hose without us finding out where the real shortage is.
I wonder who that might be. I also wonder who submitted this story.
Gastro-Intestinal aka the bit between the mouth and the anus. This stuff shows up (contrasts) on x-rays. Upper studies involve drinking it. Lower studies involve insertion from the other end. In other words, it's used for testing gut disorders and if you aren't swallowing it, you can shove it up your arse.
Gl stands for Glycemic load. Barium is a rare earth metal. No idea how the test works exactly.
GI also stands for Gastro-Intestinal
Is the submitter seriously asking us to suggest alternatives to barium?
Why not? Your comments aside, there are some very smart people who read slashdot.
Is there any other place to get Barium besides China?
They're called rare earth metals not so much because they're rare, since they're a bit all over the place, but because they're not concentrated enough to mine efficiently. This makes it highly polluting to extract them.
The US a couple more countries used to extract them, until China came along with no pollution standards, and priced everyone out of the market. Trouble is, you can't "just restart" such a mine. It's a decade long process to do so -- and it's in progress insofar as I've been following, because China decided to keep these strategic minerals for itself so as to keep high tech manufacturing at home.
It is known to cause pregnancy though ...
" These chinese fcukers are starting to realise how much the West depends on their cheap products and are throwing their weight around..."
Cheap products like iPhones and iPads? What do you think they make those things out of? Rare Earth metals are used extensively in our modern gadgets, gadgets that we pay them to make for us. Seriously, where the heck do you think they are supposed to get the materials to make this stuff? Sell it to us so we can sell it back to them? Why not use it in the products they make?
It makes no sense to sell the raw resources when you are the primary consumer of those resources, especially if you're economy is reliant on the products derived from those resources.
Yeah, when did they start caring about the workers?
... or possibly bazium.
sudo ergo sum
Barium is a rare earth metal.
Not exactly, Barium is an alkaline earth metal, related to Magnesium and Calcium. Interestingly though, the U.S. are one of the largest producers of Barium, accounting for about 8% of the world wide barium output. It's mainly mined as barit, or heavy spar.
Doesn't anyone recycle this crap?
---
Chemistry Feed @ Feed Distiller
Does anyone know of alternatives to barium?
I hope you're not considering taking any answers you get from Slashdot seriously. Let's leave this one to medical science.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
The price of barium metal at the moment is $150/kg or so - in small quantities.
Some of the 'unavailable' compounds mentioned above had a weight of around 340g, or 150g of barium, about $20.
Sure, you need processing - which pretty much amounts to dumping it in a tub, along with sulphuric acid.
Does the manufacturer of the barium compound have a problem sourcing product in a way that will result in a medically approved product without further applications to the FDA - perhaps.
But it's not shortage of barium.
Layman's explanation: Contrast agent is something that shows up as a bright color on your scan. There are many different kinds of contrast used for many different purposes, too many to list here. Barium contrast is swallowed and shows up as bright white on regular X-rays and CT scans (CTs are a multitude of X-rays taken by a computerized scanner which is then turned into a quasi-3D representation.) The reason somebody would use barium is to look at the shape of the esophagus (food pipe), stomach, intestines, and rectum to see if there are any parts that are too wide, too narrow/pinched off, the wrong shape, if there is a blockage, etc.
Not so layman's explanation of the tests mentioned:
- Barium swallow: Barium is swallowed and a real-time series of X-rays (fluoroscopy) of the throat (pharynx) is done to see if the barium is swallowed properly. The resulting video shows where the barium goes. This is ordered if the doctor suspects the person may be having problems swallowing (aspiration or refluxing.)
- Esophogram: Barium is swallowed and fluoroscopy of the esophagus is performed to see if there are any abnormalities of the size/shape/anatomy of the esophagus. This is also ordered if somebody has trouble swallowing and the doctor suspects some problem like a stricture, widening of the esophagus (achalasia), abnormal anatomy of the esophagus (such as a diverticulum, malignancy, etc.)
- UGI = Upper gastrointestinal study. This fluoroscopy stufy follows the barium from being swallowed until it goes into the stomach. It shows all of the same things as the esophagram along with the size/shape/anatomy of the stomach as well. Ordered for the same reasons as the esophagram as well as if you suspect some anatomic problem with the stomach (e.g. stomach stapling/bypass not working correctly, etc.)
- Small bowel follow through: Barium is swallowed and then a series of individual X-rays taken at certain time intervals to track the progress of the barium through the stomach and small intestine. This is done to investigate things like the stomach emptying too slowly and obstructions in the small intestine.
- Barium enema: Barium is given via enema into the rectum to look at the anatomy of the rectum. This can investigate anatomic abnormalities of the rectum such as masses and fistulas (a hole from the rectum to somewhere else, this is abnormal.) This can also be used to both diagnose and treat intusussception (a disease of infants where part of the large intestine telescopes into itself.)
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
Which opens a whole other can of worms with risks of colon perforation, reactions to the anesthetic, etc...
In the abstract, this may sound great, but I doubt many average people will want to drink the "recovered" barium....
It's also not just the "ick" factor: The stuff is often passed-through very sick people. In re-processing it you would need to absolutely guarantee you had eliminated any and all biological "stuff" right down to the cellular level ..... without error. ANY quality control problems == huge lawsuits. We used to re-use syringes and needles in medical facilities, but no more ..... you only do such things when it's so hard and expensive to make new stuff and the lawsuit penalties for error are so low that the risks are "acceptable"; that's just not modern America.
Well, it melts at around 1300 C, so I assume heating it in a furnace at 1000 C would be suitable for eliminating "any and all biological stuff"?
I don't know where this article is coming from, but worldwide baryte production is in the order of couple million tons. A day's production is enough to give one billion people the procedure. It is not strategically important at all. I can buy it by truckload at about 200$/ton.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
Oh, people eat recovered Carbon anotnd other elements all the time, why not Barium? Just think about organic fertilizers.
Gastrografin is already being used as a viable alternative to barium in radiological studies as contrast for imaging the Gastro-Intestinal (GI) tract, especially in patients where bowel perforation may be imminent (barium spills into the abdominal cavity as a result, causing barium peritonitis; while rare, it is an incredibly deadly complication), in conditions such as intestinal obstruction, for example. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diatrizoic_acid Given that I am but a medical student, this is fairly well known in the medical world. Which makes this an odd question to ask...
Ouch! Complete chemistry fail!
Barium is certainly NOT a rare earth. It is an alkaline earth metal. Look at the periodic table for christ's sake.
And the sad thing is this got modded up. Doesn't anybody know their high school chemistry anymore?
*weep*
No because the left hand is being sat on by the government, and the right hand was stolen by the oligopolies.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Sure, blame the Chinese. It's not at all the fault of the wholesalers and dealers for not stocking enough to meet a small and temporary shortfall like this. Also the US has never, ever, thrown its weight around, right?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Was being brief and assumed the implications were obvious...... guess not
1. Just because a few geeks are certain re-use is ok and might be willing to do it, the general public would not be
2. Even if you are a geek, there's no guarantee some minimum-wage flunky at a re-processing company (or some unionized hospital worker who is mad and in the middle of some "labor action") is gonna do a perfect job and the stuff YOU end up drinking will be properly re-processed. A bit like drinking re-cycled urine .... fine if you are a geek and the processing is being done by the rocket scientists at NASA for the space station, but are you still willing if it's being done by the guy who's only other career option included saying "want fries with that?"
3. A good lawyer will easily convince a typical jury (possibly with members who are anti-science lefties who reject nuclear stuff) that there was some bad thing in the re-processing process (probably done by evil "big hospital" or "big pharma") i.e. it's just another level of "doubt" ....
Think some more and you can imagine many other reasons that each just make the business case a little bit harder to close. No single cut might kill the patient (in this case: re-use of Barium), but lots of little cuts and he bleeds-out
You assume, naively, that the hospital does the recycling and just makes up fresh suspensions. Of course, if any recycling was done it would be to recover the pure BaSO4, which would be the domain of a chemical supplier; who then supplies the material to a pharma company, who then makes the thing you drink, who sells it to the hospital.
Recovering the material from shit is no different to recovering it from the ore it originally came from in the ground. Medical-purity BaSO4 is likely to be a further cut above the lab-grade stuff you can buy from any number of common chemical suppliers - purifying it is trivial - they do it all the time to make the stuff in the first place. What we're discussing here is the economic viability of recovering it from sewage waste. The source is ultimately unimportant. If it ends up in a drug it has to come from a very specific, well monitored source. There's no chance some "flunky" is going to affect the dose of contrast agent you drink. (Oh, and nice, unnecessary jab at union workers and "lefties" there - given your level of discourse and opinion of union labour I'll try and keep my words to fewer than four syllables so you can follow along).
It seems you live in a world full of conspiracies and hidden enemies in the shadows at every turn trying to get one over on you. You might want to just relax a bit. You can log in too; the government is not tracking your slashdot account.
Calcium sulfate is water soluble.
Strontium sulfate is somewhat water soluble.
The advantage of barium sulfate is that it's not water soluble.
I say anyone needing a contrast drinks several bottles of Goldschlager before the procedure.
Does anyone know of alternatives to barium?
Um, how about calcium sulfate or strontium sulfate? All are alkaline earth metals, and have the same or similar basic chemical properties because of having the same valence, electron configuration and so on. Right?
It's not the chemical properties that are really important (other than the insolubility of BaSO4). The main reason is the density of the Ba atom - it's heavy, so it has a high absorption cross section for X rays. Calcium and strontium are much less large.
"Gastro-Intestinal aka the bit between the mouth and the anus."
For many people, this is the definition of the brain.
I'll say, if they don't get their GI exam, they may very well end up impacted.
Thank you.
...but if you want to know where its being used in large quantities.... Do a google search on Barium and chemtrails.
No Shit! And for those who do not believe chemtrails exist.... even mainstream news has covered the matter.
There is no shortage. The problem is the price is increasing. But most likely the reimbursement rate by Medicare hasn't gone up to keep pace so they can't fill the orders for the price Medicare is covering. Most of this GI stuff is for seniors anyway. This is most likely a political move to get people scared so they can get the lobbyists to jack up the reimbursement rate.
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
It's basically one continuous external surface inside the body.
You make us sound like living, breathing Klein Bottles...
People seem to think that China is some sort of charity. If people want to talk of global monopolization, then you should consider things like farm subsidies. Cheap rare earth materials may have enabled China to grow its production industry at the expense of certain rich countries in the past (and I'd say that current changes actually represent a *restoration* of the natural order of things) but present agricultural subsidies are basically killing people in poor countries *right now*. I'd be all in favour of a fair, balanced and international system of setting regulations, pricing, and subsidies, but moaning only when it turns against you is just simple whining.
It's basically one continuous external surface inside the body.
You make us sound like living, breathing Klein Bottles...
Not a Klein bottle... We're basically just a living, breathing donut.
E pluribus unum
We're basically just a living, breathing, seriously deformed donut.
FTFY.
(At any rate, that reminds me to get some exercise today...)
Galileo: "The Earth revolves around the Sun!"
Score: -1 100% Flamebait
FTFA, "National", and from the summary, USA & Canada. What about the 6 billion other people you forgot?
They only usually give you an enema if they're looking at the rectum. Every other bit of the lower GI has the contrast medium ingested.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
Barium not an option?
Then Crematum.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
The price of the ingestible cameras just needs to become cheaper than the barium and some automated processing of the 'footage' needs to become available. Radiologist consults are likely more expensive than either costs to make.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
Topologically you are homeomorphic to a doughnut
....but I decided to Barium.
"Does anyone know of alternatives to barium?" Lead
Maybe if you were born without a nose.
The issue with US-mined barite/barium sulfate is that is lacks the high purity required to meet pharmaceutical specifications. US barite tends to be lower grade (having higher impurities) and is more suited as an industrial filler or weighting agent in drilling mud.
I had this done about ten years ago. It was disgusting though. Tastes so bad. But they mixed in Crystal Light so it wouldn't taste as bad. My issue was that I ingested too much and they couldn't get a good view. It was awesome though because they had this live-feed video camera xray dealio. So I could see the stuff go down my throat at the moment I ingested it. Then they gave me ice cream and you could clearly see it go into my stomach. Neat stuff.
We're basically just a living, breathing, seriously deformed donut.
FTFY.
(At any rate, that reminds me to get some exercise today...)
Well if your goal is to look more like a donut... eating more donuts is actually a way to achieve that.
I'm a good cook. I'm a fantastic eater. - Steven Brust
Basically, barium is a radio-opaque powder that shows up on the xrays, so doctors can see any obstructions or abnormalities throughout your entire digestive system. They give it to you in a disgusting milkshake format which is white, tastes bad, and is extremely thick. As you're forced to drink it over a period of several hours, you periodically go in to the xray room to have pictures taken.
The first time I went for a barium test they handed me what seemed like a 32 oz bladder buster filled with barium. After I finally finished it off I thought I was done, but to my horror they gave me another one, and then another one, and then another one. It just went on and on for 3-4 hours and I had to keep drinking more and more of it. To make it worse you have to "expunge" all that barium afterwards, and it comes out looking the same it did when it went in...
No barium, bury 'em.
Some settling may occur during posting.
It will be interesting to see what happens then the global supply of helium runs out in a few years, apparently we have about 25 to 35 years left.
:)
Its not just used for your kids birthday balloons (in fact that gas is likely second-hand / reused gas in the first place) it used to cool MRI machines.
Time to buy a couple of tankers and invest in a long term profit
You poor bastard. My experience was just a single barium milkshake, preceded by a pill-cup full of flavorless pop rocks to inflate my stomach. Considering the after-effects of just one (I foolishly thought I could go to work that afternoon), I can only imagine the effects of multiple barium milkshakes.
For those who've yet to experience this miracle of modern medicine: when asked what flavor you want added, choose a flavor you won't care if you never taste again, for you'll probably never want to taste it again... Coworker several jobs back can no longer drink strawberry milkshakes for this reason.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
There are good alternatives to barium (such as gold), but you can't use them until the FDA approves them.
My first reading was "barlum"... what?
I squinted over my still full first cuppa and then read "barfum." Huh? Is that like stickum I thought?
Then I expand the article summary and see "barium sulfate" in the first sentence... the brain kicked in to cruising gear about then.
I can see the fnords!
We're basically just a living, breathing, seriously deformed donut.
FTFY.
(At any rate, that reminds me to get some exercise today...)
Maybe they got it wrong. Maybe they couldn't figure out what donuts were supposed to be shaped like so they just made all the donuts round.
Which brings up the point - none of this barium has actually left the Earth - it's all around here somewhere. The medical barium all came out in the end, and depending on what's done with solid sludge from the waste treatment plants, we know where it is. However since only a small portion of the population is ever getting this procedure at anyone time, it's probably quite dilute. This of course suggests one possible measure, and that's keeping barium patients around the hospital a day or two longer, and having special bathroom and waste treatment facilities for them.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Just as a note, I had an upper GI tract study done with barium sulfate about fifteen years ago to diagnose a hiatal hernia. They showed me a clear X-ray video of my swallowing and the pouch in front of my stomach that was causing my reflux and pain. For such a simple test, it's a great visualizer of stomach problems.
(The next two bowel movements I had were literally like lead bricks. If you want to mine more barium, I'd say check the sewers.)
I expect that without barium sulfate, the upper GI study will be replaced by endoscopy, where they put a camera on a tube down your throat to video the stomach from the inside. I've had that procedure done also. It's more invasive, more expensive, and requires general anesthetic.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
I guess that means "No enema for you!" :-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
That they fail high school chemistry is not surprising, that they can't be bothered googling it is.
I'm aging rapidly, I bought a new game and had no idea if my machine was good for it.
Just a bit less powdery and a bit more farty.
Oh shit ... it out... and recycle it, duh.
That's great, except a lot of time this is an outpatient procedure. I wasn't even _at_ a hospital, just a medical office where the doc worked most of the time. I can't even imagine the increased costs of hospitalizing someone for a couple days for what's essentially just a the preliminary stages of a diagnosis.
"The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule." --H.L. Mencken
The word is torus. We are basically homeomorphic to a torus. So are sheep -- apply a mapping such that the interior and exterior of the torus are exchanged, and the result is called a haggis.
Charity - far from it, more like milking us for what we're worth and hell bent on taking over the world. See "Chinese century"
Is about the least toxic of the heavy metals (High Z atoms stop X rays best for contrast). Surely some compound of Bi would work instead. Heck, pepto-bismol might work. But it's tough to get the medical community to change anything. Look at the issues with Tc-99. Lots of other stuff would work fine, there is a shortage (Chalk river shut down), but no one will even consider anything else because that's what the sinecure chemists in hospitals know how to do, and don't want to earn their pay learning something else. And yes, I know my nukes.
Why guess when you can know? Measure!
Since Barium is useful in the early detection of various serious and potentially fatal afflictions, the answer to the OP is obvious.
In the absence of Barium, Bury'em!
Wish I had mod points for you man..
All that makes it sound like recycling the (already purified) barium from shit is very cost-effective compared to mining and purifying more, rather like Aluminum.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I don't know. There's that one picture the trolls keep linking to in every thread -- that guy looks like he's well on his way to self-intersection.
It's more invasive, more expensive, and requires general anesthetic.
No. It can and usually is done under twilight sedation.
It really depends upon when the cost of barium becomes greater than the cost of keeping you in some sort of minimal care/cost sh*t-wait facility. Note that no such facility exists today, but if relative costs change...
I'm also under the impression that antibiotics leave the body in urine and feces. How much antibiotic resistance is because of misuse, and how much is because of uncontrolled introduction into the environment through our wastes? Such a facility mentioned above might also be worthwhile for our antibiotics-of-last-resort, for instance.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
It's more invasive, more expensive, and requires general anesthetic.
No. It can and usually is done under twilight sedation.
I can see that would work; watching the Twilight movies would put anyone to sleep.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Surely can't be that expensive to make one, given that most of the components are on virtually every mobile phone on the planet.
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
That's what my doctor does when his patients die.
Have gnu, will travel.
You wouldn't be welcome on such a site, given your attitude to questions - which, after all, are a prerequisite to learning.
First, medicine is a science, thus the expression "most scientific and medical terms" is redundant. Second, no one understands most scientific terms. "Science" refers to the entire body of human knowledge, which not only is far too vast for any one person to know most of, but also grows faster than you can learn it - even if your learning capacity was unlimited, the bandwidth of your senses is simply not enough.
Finally, "nerd" doesn't necessarily refer to someone interested in either science in general or medicine in specific. People who are enthusiastic about programming, or matemathics, or 19th century French poetry could all be called nerds without necessarily knowing what "GI" refers to in a medical context - assuming it actually refers to just one thing and isn't reused anywhere. On the other hand, "LEO" is usually used with sufficient context to conclude that we are talking about some kind of satellite orbit or at the very least a space trajectory.
Perhaps you wouldn't have such issues with jocks if you changed your attitude a little? Because I can certainly see why a jock - or, really, anyone - might not like you.
They don't like you because you're an arrogant twat, just in case you didn't get that already.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Typical impurities in US barium sulfate (Nevada mines) are silica and strontium sulfate. Silica can be somewhat removed via froth flotation using standard commercially known techniques. The Sr is bound up in the Ba-Sr-SO4 lattice and very difficult to remove. Were they not bound together in the crystalline structure you could likely use an alkaline leach with sodium hydroxide (I saw a patent from the 1930s or 1940s that discussed this very approach), but when they are bound together you do not get selective leaching. Also, because they are bound together gravimetric separation (SrSO4 = ~3.8 SG IIRC, BaSO4 = ~4.45 SG) doesn't work.
Sr and Ba are very similar chemically, but to meet the USP requirement of 97.5% min BaSO4 you have to be able to get the purity up (or start with a high purity ore). The USP assay test differentiates between the two because of the difference in solubility as chromates - the Sr chromate is much more soluble but you have to convert everything to chromates to get the Sr to drop out, then you'd have to convert the Ba chromate back to BaSO4 and not leave any chromate in there, as it is very toxic. At that point you are no longer dealing with natural purified barium sulfate but are instead making a precipitated barium sulfate, in which case you could just start with pretty much any barium compound and fully react it with sulfuric acid. The problem here is that any soluble barium left behind is very toxic (for a real life example of what could go wrong see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Celobar_incident).
By the time you do all of the processing above the cost is nowhere near what could be achieved with natural, high-purity barium sulfate ore that undergoes a simple acid leach.
I don't know if there is a difference between the Barium Sulfate used in medical imaging and that used to drill oil wells, but I know that one of the largest mines in the world for that mineral was near Cartersville, (no relation to a former president) Georgia. At least that was true back in the late 1960's when I took some geology courses at Georgia Tech in Atlanta. Is this another case of the US having closed mines in favor of imports from China? I seem to remember reading that this may have been partially responsible for the "shortages" of rare earth elements.
Oh, wait...
With the production of Barite at 8,000,000 metric tons per year (http://www.indexmundi.com/en/commodities/minerals/barite/barite_t7.html) the real shortage is caused by the fixed price medicare pays for a procedure involving a barium swallow.
Are not. Even considering only the nostrils, you're already more complex than a doughnut -- there's no continuous transformation that would get rid of the extra two holes.
In other words, capitalism. If there's an opportunity to make money, and you don't put into place methods to stop it, why on earth would you expect them not to take advantage? The goodness of their heart?
Not sure what 'twilight sedation' is. I was given a chemical that the doctor said would not put me to sleep but I wouldn't feel nor remember anything...and I didn't. That probably doesn't meet the technical definition of 'general anesthesia', but from my perspective I was out like a light.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
Baryte, or barite, (BaSO4) is a mineral consisting of barium sulfate. Baryte itself is generally white or colorless, and is the main source of barium.
The major baryte producers (in thousand tonnes, data for 2010) are as follows: China (3,600), India (1,000), United States (670), Morocco (460), Iran (250), Turkey (150) and Kazakhstan (100). In just the USA, It is mined in Arkansas, Connecticut, Virginia, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, Kentucky, Nevada & Missouri. [Source]
Now that you know where it comes from and where it is found in the USA, why aren't those mines increasing their production? Has everyone become so lazy that it makes sense to import everything?
Agrisea Tsunami - Epyc Servers... https://agrisea.net/products
Your GI tract tubes are like the internet...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twilight_anesthesia
Barium is not in short supply, although medical grade barium sulphate may be. I guess the mined baryte is never used in medical procedures, regardless of its purity when it came from the ground. Making pure barium sulphate from baryte is straightforward though. Coke, dissolve in sulfuric acid, precipitate. Rinse and repeat if higher purity is desired. Of course this adds a certain cost (precipitated barium sulphate was around 700 $/ton last I checked, in 2007) but that is peanuts for medical applications. One is using a couple hundred grams for the contrast procedure.
Gentlemen, you can't fight in here, this is the War Room!
The use of barium for radiological studies is such a small fraction of the whole barium sulfate market. This shortage is a complete fabrication!
Gotcha. But note that I was fully awake during the barium sulfate procedure, and walked out of the doctor's office under my own power.
Genocide Man -- Life is funny. Death is funnier. Mass murder can be hilarious.
So, topologically speaking, a human is isomorphic to a coffee cup?
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
Barium is much more abundant than any of the rare earth elements. (It's about as common in the earth's crust as sulfur, give or take a few percentage points.)
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
I don't eat aluminum.
"Twilight sedation" is when you are given a drug to make you sedated but not actually to the point of unconsciousness as with general anesthesia. The big advantages of it is that you do not need an anesthesiologist around or quite the same level of monitoring, plus patients tend to come out of it quicker. Usually it is done with midazolam (Versed) which as a useful side effect generally makes people forget the procedure. Sometimes fentanyl is used as well, it also is a pain medication. Kids tend to get ketamine, adults less so because adults can be very agitated (dysphoric) when they come out of ketamine.
Just "gittin-r-done," day after day.
The problem seems to be a fragile single sourced supply chain, both by the doctors and the manufacturer.
A five-hole donut (assuming your anatomy is normal - including intact eardrums).
Mouth-to-anus gastrointestinal tract, two nostrils (into throat), two ducts from corners of eyes (into nasal passages).
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Iodine is used in the illegal manufacture of Methamphetamine. As a resule, Iodine has recently been reclassified as a List I chemical under federal law. Those handling or selling iodine and its compounds must now go through a bunch of bureaucratic red tape with the DEA.
I found this out right after the Fukushima disaster (when I tried to find some potassium iodide supplement {or other potable iodine compound, such as water purification tablets or tincture of iodine} to take to bump my iodine level before the fallout arrived). Guess what: None to be found. Not just because it had been sold out by those who responded faster. But because most retailers (including large drug store chains and sporting goods stores) had stopped carrying it, rather than deal with the drug warriors.
I suspect that, even if some iodine compound is suitable for a gastrointestinal contrast medium, the drug industry has not been interested in developing it and seeking approval, at least until now. While barium was in cheap supply why should they spend money developing a replacement whose distribution would involve expensive federal red tape?
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Medical-purity BaSO4 is likely to be a further cut above the lab-grade stuff you can buy from any number of common chemical suppliers - purifying it is trivial - they do it all the time to make the stuff in the first place.
Purifying it of hepatitis virus is NOT trivial (and I won't even go into what's necessary to denature prions).
Once it's been through the intestinal tract of one patient, making it pure enough to be inserted to another's is likely to be far more expensive than purifying something that came out of a mine.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
What makes little sense is the complaining about a shortage in hospitals, where a dose is less then an ounce, when oil drillers are pumping the stuff into the ground by the ton...daily...all over the world.
As was pointed out elsewhere in this article: The ores used for drilling mud (notably those from US sources) contain far too much hard-to-remove toxic impurities (notably barium-strontium-sulfate) for medical use. Also, chemical processes to refine out the toxic impurities create FAR MORE TOXIC compounds in the intermediate steps, which must in turn be very carefully and completely removed. (And one supplier went belly-up, and earned long prison terms for an exec and a chemist, after killing several patients by attempting to substitute poorly "purified" cheaper ore.)
While the good stuff from the Chinese ore was cheap and plentiful there's been no reason to try to substitute anything else.
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
Being slightly more serious, the only other simple heavy metal salt which is sufficiently low solubility to be credible would probably be lead sulphate. But even that is probably too toxic, too cumulative and too likely to get mobilised into the metabolism. Caesium salts would probably be pretty biologically benign, but they're almost all significantly soluble in stomach conditions. And a touch on the expensive side. I don't recall mercury having any salts as insoluble and as refractory as barytes, and otherwise it's got as bad a biochemistry as lead.
No good options on the sixth row of the periodic table then. Next row up, you're losing significant degree of contrast on the X-rays - scattering is strongly coupled to nuclear mass. (Oh, horrors ; I'm trying to remember how the photoelectric factor "PEF" modifies the interpretation of oil exploration of neutron-porosity and density logs. But yeah, atomic mass is pretty much the biggest component to the correction calculations.) And the obvious candidate to look at here is strontium sulphate. Most of the chemical behaviours of barytes, biologically relatively benign (do not confuse with the effects of the strontium-90 isotope!), should certainly provide significant contrast in X-rays. And I can't see anything that would come close in desirability on row five. So I'd say that your best substitute may well be strontium sulphate.
Mind you ... some of the tungstate-VI compounts might be worth a look too. But they're liable to chemical erosion followed by acute metal poisoning in the real world, so I'd be very chary of them. Pass me another guinea pig, this one is squeaking loudly and writhing in a good impersonation of agony.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
What about trying to reutilize or recycle barium? If you can't get enough nor find a good alternative. For example, in clinical test, can't they save their patients urine for later quenching? For funding, research and peer finding please refer to the non-profit Aging Portfolio.
How about educating people to eat more healthily, and investing in healthy food, so that there will be less GI problems?
-alex-