🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <3qmheb$sq8@southern.co.nz>,
Brian Sandle <Brian_Sandle@equinox.gen.nz> wrote:

>I usually eat quite a few dates. About half an hour ago I ate 
>some uncooked from the Noushkhand Trading Co, Tehran, Iran. 
>The side of the sealed container has holes punched in it as if 
>a fumigant may have been used. Consedines "Food and  Food 
>Production(?)" says Methyl Bromide may be used as a fumigant. 
>Would symptoms of this be a burning taste in the mouth, and a 
>slighlty swollen throat? The effect is sort of between the 
>feeling of sulfur dioxide and the cyanide from bitter almonds, 
>but also has a taste of black sweet licorice.
 
I don't know anything about the health effects, or the short term effects,
apart from the fact that as a substance which will react with all sorts of
nucleophiles it almost certainly is a carcinogen. I would certainly treat
it as such.

But that's not my turf.

Methyl bromide is a pretty volatile compound, and is widely used to
fumigate grains and grain products. The principal reason its use is
permitted is that it is easy to blow away. Further, residues react with
water in the matrix, and so you tend to have no detectable residues of
methyl bromide itself, more than a little while after fumigation. Don't ask
me to quantify "a little while after".

Food that has a fair amount of moisture will retain detectable residues of
bromide. Fruit, for instance, so that if you measure the total bromide in a
fruit you can almost always tell if it has been fumigated with methyl
bromide. Or some other aliphatic bromide, anyway.

Dates have enough moisture that I would not expect methyl bromide to
survive for long, volatility aside. Whatever you reacted to, it was
probably not methyl bromide.

I have analyzed a moderate amount of food for methyl bromide, and only on a
few occasions have I found any actual methyl bromide. Residual bromide,
yes, but rarely methyl bromide itself.

- Shankar