The History of Selenium — The Poison Your Heart Needs

The History of Selenium — The Poison Your Heart Needs In the winter of 1935, farm families in Keshan County, in China's far northeast, began dying of a heart illness that nobody could explain, so a surgeon named it after the county. What was the land of Keshan doing to the hearts of the people who farmed it? A deadly heart illness belongs to a place and has no known cause. A factory's waste, first taken for tellurium, becomes a new element. A nameless trouble cripples grazing animals on the plains, and its first record is doubted. Selenium turns out to respond to light, and light makes current in it. Adams and Day's selenium cell also led Charles Fritts in 1883 to a selenium and gold panel that turned about one percent of light into current, installed on a New York rooftop in 1884. The plains' poison is named as selenium, overturning the alkali-water belief. Demand grows for rectifiers and glass, and refinery workers carry the exposure. The known poison, in a trace, prevents fatal liver disease: selenium is a nutrient. Selenium's light-sense goes into the office copier. Too much selenium from weathered coal poisons whole villages. Selenium is found inside an enzyme that protects cells, essential for mammals. A weekly selenite tablet cuts Keshan disease: the land was short of selenium. Farm drainage concentrates selenium up the food chain and deforms a refuge's birds. A supplier's error puts nearly 200 times the labeled selenium into a supplement. The largest test of selenium against prostate cancer finds no protection. The element reaches the pharmacy shelf and the shampoo bottle. ⏱ TIMESTAMPS 0:00 Vomiting Yellow Water 1:05 The Red Sludge at Falun 2:33 The Dragoon Horses at Fort Randall 3:52 Rods on the Cable 5:21 Speech on a Sunbeam 7:11 Alkali Disease 9:14 Plates in the Radio 11:09 Factor 3 13:14 The Selenium Drum 14:19 Hair and Nails in Enshi 15:49 The Enzyme in the Red Cell 17:21 Tablets in Mianning 20:16 The Silent Marsh at Kesterson 23:34 The Bottles From Atlanta 25:11 The Pills 35,000 Men Stopped 26:45 The Tablet on the Shelf Subscribe for more hidden histories behind the objects you use every day. #history #documentary #selenium