Why were they working with an unauthorised potent neurotoxin? MIT didn't "permit" this, although you could ask how student supervision allows it to arise.

Is there some interesting aspect which danger aside might motivate this or was it just a dick move? Were they possibly motivated for bad reasons, seeking to commit harm?

▲ philipkglass 2 days ago | parent [-]

Dimethylmercury is (or was, at least historically) used as a reference material for nuclear magnetic resonance (a common analytical method used in chemistry):

https://sites.northwestern.edu/ohalloran/199hg-nmr-standards...

This MIT incident was in a chemistry building that has been in use since 1970, so it could have been accidental release of an old, unused container or sample tube of the material.

▲ ggm 2 days ago | parent | next [-]

Thanks! 40+ years ago I worked in a marine biology lab as a dishpig for seawater analysis and we had fun times when the annual clear out found a gallon jug of benzene at the point of panic about benzene being replaced by toluene.

▲ kadoban 2 days ago | parent | prev [-]

The wording of the announcements, sounds like a student synthesized it. Can't imagine why, hopefully it wasn't a fatal mistake.

	▲	manarth 2 days ago \| parent [-]
		`> "Can't imagine why"` "There's no point banning it, it's easy to make – let me show you. Hold my beer."