Poison

I nearly poisoned myself

What a dangerous stuff! I tell this story for other people who may have got it. Throw it away (in a responsible way).

In a South African supermarket I bought a bottle of anti-cockroach stuff that seemed to be tough. Just what I needed for on board was my thought. It has been standing under the sink for four month and every now and then I got a whiff of the strong smell.

Last night a cockroach was sighted: time for the tough stuff. I opened the bottle of Kombat which was still sealed but seemed to be leaking a bit. I opened it and accidentally spilled about 5 ml on the floor. I took toilet paper to clean it and threw that in the toilet and rinsed it out (I thought). Then mixed the stuff according to prescription and sprayed and went to sleep.

After an hour I woke up feeling itchy over my body. I started googling the components of Kombat and found some very scary stuff. It is nearly pure Malathion, related to Sarin. So I decided to roll up the carpet because I had not been able to clean that completely and rinse the toilet a bit more. That did not succeed as it was blocked by the paper and gas was coming back up the toilet that really smelled bad. I did a stupid thing and poured some bleach in the toilet to try to dissolve the paper more quickly. More gas came up. So I opened all hatches and closed the door to the aft cabin and googled a bit more. I found that with bleach Malathion changes to Malaoxon which is 1000x more toxic. http://toxnet.nlm.nih.gov/cgi-bin/sis/search/a?dbs+hsdb:@term+@DOCNO+4047

That was enough! I packed the stuff in plastic and placed them downwind outside for later disposal, took the rolled up carpet outside to let it air out and closed off the toilet. Now I could, after 8 hours venting, walk again through the cabin without feeling itchy immediately.

This is no stuff to be used in households or by amateurs. The flyer that comes with it gives general sounding warnings, not really alarming. I cannot believe that this is sold for that purpose. If you have it, give it to a collection point for chemical waste.

I will first try to unblock the toilet outlet from the outside and leave it for another 24 hours before I do anything more. I think I have been lucky and maybe the poisoning had already started a lot earlier as one of the symptoms is fatigue. And I do think I was unusually tired the last weeks.