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March 29, 2024, 05:21:15 am

Author Topic: carbon monoxide poisoning  (Read 1667 times)  Share 

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kat05

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carbon monoxide poisoning
« on: July 03, 2020, 07:30:59 pm »
+1
Hi there,
Could someone please concisely explain how to get rid of carbon monoxide poisoning? I don't understand beyond the part of administering pure oxygen and I am familiar with Le Chatlier's Principle but still unsure how this works.

Thank you :)

angrybiscuit

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Re: carbon monoxide poisoning
« Reply #1 on: July 03, 2020, 08:22:12 pm »
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Hi!
These are the reactions we're looking at:

HgB + O2 <--> HgbO2
Hgb + CO <--> HgbCO (just imagine these are double arrows hehe)

To get rid of carbon monoxide poisoning you essentially have to make the equilibrium system favour the reverse reaction. In that case, you’ll have to give in large doses of pure oxygen.

When you give large amounts of oxygen, the system will compensate by consuming the excess oxygen (according to Le Chatlier’s principle). In order to do this, carboxyhemoglobin must dissociate back to haemoglobin and carbon monoxide (remember, most haemoglobin are bonded to carbon monoxide instead of oxygen). Since there’s an excess in oxygen, haemoglobin will bond to the oxygen, essentially reversing the poisoning.

Let me know if you need further clarification :)

Edit: clearly got the equations wrong but the same principles apply. Haven't done chem in less than a year and already have forgotten most, I don't know how y'all do it 😅
« Last Edit: July 03, 2020, 08:40:51 pm by angrybiscuit »
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Owlbird83

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Re: carbon monoxide poisoning
« Reply #2 on: July 03, 2020, 08:28:52 pm »
+9
Hi there,
Could someone please concisely explain how to get rid of carbon monoxide poisoning? I don't understand beyond the part of administering pure oxygen and I am familiar with Le Chatlier's Principle but still unsure how this works.

Thank you :)
The equation where haemoglobin is bonded to CO2 on one side and to O2 on the other side can go in either direction.
Hb(O2)4(aq)+4CO(aq)⇌Hb(CO)4(aq)+4O2(aq)
Haemoglobin is much much more likely to bond to carbon dioxide than oxygen.
Le Chateliers principle is about the equilibrium shifting to counteract a change.
So in this equation, if you add more oxygen, the equation will shift a bit backwards. This is because when you add oxygen there's a lot more stuff now on the right side, so the reverse reaction will increase a bit to reach a new equilibrium where there is more haemoglobin bonded to oxygen than there was before.

(I just saw there's already a reply, but I'll post anyway in case it helps)
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keltingmeith

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Re: carbon monoxide poisoning
« Reply #3 on: July 03, 2020, 08:31:39 pm »
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Okay, so to understand how to get rid of CO poisoning, first you need to understand how it poisons us:

Our body transports oxygen around the body by the use of haemoglobin. Oxygen comes in, it binds to haemoglobin, haemoglobin takes it to where it needs to go. However, if something is already bound to haemoglobin, then the oxygen can't bind to it - and this is where carbon monoxide comes in. Carbon monoxide can also bind to haemoglobin - but haemoglobin can only have 1 of these chemicals bound at a time, and it's really difficult for oxygen to bind if carbon monoxide is around*

So, if someone has carbon monoxide poisoning, then how can we get oxygen to bind? Well, remember that no reaction is truly ever 1 way - even if carbon monoxide will bind preferentially, there's still an equilibrium at play - namely:

Hb4(CO)4 + 4O2 <==> Hb4(O2)4 + 4CO

Now, remember - we want our haemoglobin to to bind to oxygen, not carbon monoxide. If we look in our chemical toolbox, we know that Le Chatlier's principle gives us a list of ways to push the equilibrium from one side to the other. Can you:

a) figure out what side we want to push towards?
b) figure out what we could do to push the equilibrium to that side?

For bonus points - knowing that the haemoglobin prefers to bind CO, can you figure out whether the equilibrium constant K is:

a) Greater than 1
b) Equal to 1
c) Less than 1



*=the reason for this is beyond VCE and is first year uni level - but also it's not that difficult and I think the concept is really cool. Basically, carbon monoxide is a little weird in that it has a lone pair on the carbon. See, carbon doesn't like having electrons on it - it makes it more unstable. Metals, on the other hand, are typically positively charged and REALLY want electrons. In fact, they're often so big that the electrons they do have aren't particularly close to them. So, when the carbon monoxide notices the big, fat, electron-hungry iron in the centre of haemoglobin, it dives carbon-first onto the metal. And, unlike the bonds you study in VCE, it forms what's called a coordination bond - instead of the iron and the carbon sharing an electron, both of the electrons come from the carbon. Meanwhile, oxygen is very stable in its configuration - it's quite happy with its electron arrangement. But, when it sees that iron all by itself, it decides to share so it can offload for a little bit. As a result, it'll still bind to the iron in haemoglobin, but much more weakly. As a result, if the haemoglobin has a choice between having molecular oxygen or carbon monoxide bind, it's going to pick the carbon monoxide every time. In inorganic chemistry, we say that this happens because carbon monoxide is a "stronger field ligand". Note that it isn't always true that the stronger field ligand binds preferentially, because it also depends on the metal (we say based on how "hard" or "soft" it is) and for more complicated molecules other effects can come into play, but that's a discussion for second year inorganic chemistry.


EDIT: Welp, I got beaten twice, daaaaang. Leaving this here for my dope interest paragraph I put at the end



Edit: clearly got the equations wrong but the same principles apply. Haven't done chem in less than a year and already have forgotten most, I don't know how y'all do it

Straight up, I had to double check the equation in a textbook I don't even own anymore, don't feel bad (insert upside down smiley face emoji that I can't find D:). And if you mean by my combining the two into one equation, that was me cheating The textbook mentions the two separately as well

1729

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Re: carbon monoxide poisoning
« Reply #4 on: July 04, 2020, 07:53:01 am »
+9
Hi there,
Could someone please concisely explain how to get rid of carbon monoxide poisoning?
Carbon Monoxide binds more strongly than oxygen to hemoglobin, which effectively disables the protein from capturing oxygen. That's why it's so dangerous: it robs the body of your ability to breathe. You might be thinking, "well, let's kick it out!" but unfortunately, oxygen by itself can't kick it out, and other things that would kick CO out don't quite exist yet and is under a lot of research. The best we can do is just to make sure that the victim has plenty of oxygen, which hopefully will allow them to utilize what hemoglobin they have left to breathe easier. There's longterm damage that needs recovering from after CO poisoning, so hopefully we develop a better treatment soon. Carbonyls are amongst the strongest binding ligands in chemistry, which makes carbonyl containing compounds extremely toxic and deadly.
I don't understand beyond the part of administering pure oxygen and I am familiar with Le Chatlier's Principle but still unsure how this works.
So pure oxygen would probably increase oxygen concentration leading to the production of more oxyhemoglobin as the product is favored by the Le Chatelier principle?
« Last Edit: July 04, 2020, 08:01:29 am by 1729 »

kat05

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Re: carbon monoxide poisoning
« Reply #5 on: July 14, 2020, 10:59:16 pm »
0
Hi!
These are the reactions we're looking at:

HgB + O2 <--> HgbO2
Hgb + CO <--> HgbCO (just imagine these are double arrows hehe)

To get rid of carbon monoxide poisoning you essentially have to make the equilibrium system favour the reverse reaction. In that case, you’ll have to give in large doses of pure oxygen.

When you give large amounts of oxygen, the system will compensate by consuming the excess oxygen (according to Le Chatlier’s principle). In order to do this, carboxyhemoglobin must dissociate back to haemoglobin and carbon monoxide (remember, most haemoglobin are bonded to carbon monoxide instead of oxygen). Since there’s an excess in oxygen, haemoglobin will bond to the oxygen, essentially reversing the poisoning.

Let me know if you need further clarification :)

Edit: clearly got the equations wrong but the same principles apply. Haven't done chem in less than a year and already have forgotten most, I don't know how y'all do it 😅
Wow! Thanks for the help :)