NICKEL POISONING

Abstract

Studies were recently reported by us¹ on the effects of acute and subacute exposure of experimental animals to the vapors of nickel carbonyl. In this paper are reported the results of clinical investigations on two groups of people exposed to this material: one group consisted of about 100 workmen exposed within a period of a few hours while engaged in the repair of a plant reactor contaminated with nickel carbonyl²; the other group consisted of five subjects exposed individually under varying working conditions and at different times and locations. Nickel carbonyl was discovered by Mond, Langer, and Quincke³ in 1890, and its extremely toxic nature was recognized shortly thereafter. In 1891 McKendrick and Snodgrass⁴ concluded that a concentration of even less than 0.5% in air was dangerous. Later investigations have shown that this value is much too high and that the lethal concentration is about in