Cobalt poisoning Cobalt poisoning Cobalt poisoning is intoxication caused by excessive levels of cobalt in the body. Cobalt is an essential element for health in animals in minute amounts as a component of Vitamin B. A deficiency of cobalt, which is very rare, is also potentially lethal, leading to pernicious anemia. Exposure to cobalt metal dust is most common in the fabrication of tungsten carbide. Another potential source is wear and tear of metal-on-metal hip prostheses. The value for soluble cobalt salts has been estimated to be between 150 and 500 mg/kg. Thus, for a 100 kg person the LD would be
Chemical element of the four elements nor Paracelsus' view of three fundamental elements, left open the question of the number of elements. The first modern list of chemical elements was given in Antoine Lavoisier's 1789 "Elements of Chemistry", which contained thirty-three elements, including light and caloric. By 1818, Jöns Jakob Berzelius had determined atomic weights for forty-five of the forty-nine then-accepted elements. Dmitri Mendeleev had sixty-six elements in his periodic table of 1869. From Boyle until the early 20th century, an element was defined as a pure substance that could not be decomposed into any simpler substance. Put another way, a chemical