![]() Video journalist Brady Haran is the man with the camera and the University of Nottingham is the place with the chemists. Here's our favourite chemistry professor, telling us more about the uses of antimony: Most of the world's purified antimony is used as a flame retardant, but it also is alloyed with lead for use in batteries, bearings and solders. It even has its own Egyptian hieroglyph:Īntimony has a number of industrial uses. But these days, safer preparations are used, so antimony is only used to treat leishmaniasis.Īll that said, antimony has been known since ancient times when it was used as an eye cosmetic in Egypt. The dosages used were high enough to kill the parasites but not high enough to kill the host. ![]() That said, antimony-containing compounds were used as anti-parasitic medications to treat both humans and animals for schistosomiasis, filariasis and leishmaniasis. A heavy drinker, Mozart was known to also overindulge in the popular hangover cure of the day that contains antimony, tartar emetic, C 4 H 4 K O 7Sb, which was provided by his doctors. In fact, it is far more likely that Mozart was poisoned by his doctors. About the Contributor: Back to the Periodic Table. As popularised by the 1984 film, Amadaeus, some people thought he was a victim of poisoning at the hand of rival composer, Antonio Salieri, although historians don't give this hypothesis any credence. Antimony : The Instrumentation Center : The University of Toledo. Perhaps the most famous victim of antimony poisoning is the composer, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Despite the lack of modern diagnostic technology, at least several men were executed for these crimes. Victorian doctors were aware of this property of antimony and used it to rid themselves of unwanted wives, girlfriends and relatives. Poisoning by antimony ingestion manifests as gastric distress, and large doses cause vomiting, and kidney and liver damage, followed by death a few days later. Antimony is even more toxic when inhaled as the gas, stibine, Sb H 3. When ingested, antimony strongly bonds to sulfur-containing enzymes, thereby inactivating them. ![]() Īntimony has no known biological role, but it is a potent toxin, with effects that are similar to arsenic poisoning. It is often found in the company of sulfur, which it bonds tightly, and the most common source for antimony is the sulfurous mineral, stibnite (Sb 2 S 3).īefore I tell you more about antimony, I just have to show this picture of stibnite to you because I think it's such a beautiful mineral: Stibnite, at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. As you can see in the above image, antimony is a lustrous grey metal. Its symbol, Sb, comes from the Latin name for this element, stibium, and its atomic number is 51. Chromium is a steely-grey, lustrous, hard and brittle metal4 which takes a high polish, resists tarnishing, and has a high melting point. This week's element, antimony, is not as familiar to the public as some of the others we've met during the course of this series. Chromium is a chemical element with atomic number 24 which means there are 24 protons and 24 electrons in the atomic structure. Image: Unknown ( Creative Commons Attribution 1.0 Generic license.)
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