Metal carbonyl 18-electron complexes is sometimes catalysed by catalytic amounts of oxidants, via electron-transfer. Metal carbonyls react with reducing agents such as metallic sodium or sodium amalgam to give carbonylmetalate (or carbonylate) anions: For iron pentacarbonyl, one obtains the tetracarbonylferrate with loss of CO: Mercury can insert into the metal-metal bonds of some polynuclear metal carbonyls: The CO ligand is often susceptible to attack by nucleophiles. For example, trimethylamine oxide and bistrimethylsilylamide convert CO ligands to CO and CN, respectively. In the "Hieber base reaction", hydroxide ion attacks the CO ligand to give a metallacarboxylic acid, followed by the release of carbon
Mercury poisoning type of mercury poisoning in children characterized by pain and pink discoloration of the hands and feet. The word is derived from the Greek, where άκρο means "end" or "extremity", and οδυνη means "pain". Acrodynia resulted primarily from calomel in teething powders and decreased greatly after calomel was excluded from most teething powders in 1954. Acrodynia is difficult to diagnose, "it is most often postulated that the etiology of this syndrome is an idiosyncratic hypersensitivity reaction to mercury because of the lack of correlation with mercury levels, many of the symptoms resemble recognized mercury poisoning." Mercury was once prescribed as