Did RFK Jr find us already?
this post was submitted on 16 Sep 2025
-26 points (15.8% liked)
Ask Science
12897 readers
74 users here now
Ask a science question, get a science answer.
Community Rules
Rule 1: Be respectful and inclusive.
Treat others with respect, and maintain a positive atmosphere.
Rule 2: No harassment, hate speech, bigotry, or trolling.
Avoid any form of harassment, hate speech, bigotry, or offensive behavior.
Rule 3: Engage in constructive discussions.
Contribute to meaningful and constructive discussions that enhance scientific understanding.
Rule 4: No AI-generated answers.
Strictly prohibit the use of AI-generated answers. Providing answers generated by AI systems is not allowed and may result in a ban.
Rule 5: Follow guidelines and moderators' instructions.
Adhere to community guidelines and comply with instructions given by moderators.
Rule 6: Use appropriate language and tone.
Communicate using suitable language and maintain a professional and respectful tone.
Rule 7: Report violations.
Report any violations of the community rules to the moderators for appropriate action.
Rule 8: Foster a continuous learning environment.
Encourage a continuous learning environment where members can share knowledge and engage in scientific discussions.
Rule 9: Source required for answers.
Provide credible sources for answers. Failure to include a source may result in the removal of the answer to ensure information reliability.
By adhering to these rules, we create a welcoming and informative environment where science-related questions receive accurate and credible answers. Thank you for your cooperation in making the Ask Science community a valuable resource for scientific knowledge.
We retain the discretion to modify the rules as we deem necessary.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
lmao
Since I never mentioned it, the reason I ask is I got dehydrated last night and I guess my brain conflated the want for saline IV with ocean water.
I asked AI
No! Bad!
Though it happens to be right in this case. It would be incredibly dangerous. There's all sorts of nasty shit in seawater that you really don't want in your bloodstream
Lemmy complains about stupid questions out of one side of it's mouth and about OP asking a machine out of the other.
Bacteria... Does one really need to say ANYTHING else?
So... Seawater heated to 99,9°C for 10 minutes (Or to 150 °C under a high pressure), then cooled to 37°C?
Would that work? Probably still too dirty in other ways. Or?
Not necessarily - there are parasites and nasties whose spores are fairly resistant. Depending on where you got your sea water it might not be enough.
So, we need to bring the pressure up enough for the water not to boil at +800 °C. Understood!
load more comments
(21 replies)
Maybe you should buy one of those kids microscopes and see how much small stuff floats in a single drop of water. I didn't try seawater as a kid, but water from a pond has millions of moving, living things in it. Most of them probably harmless. But brackish water isn't really supposed to be in the bloodstream.
load more comments
(7 replies)
Embolism. Which could happen with regular water or even just air being injected into a vein.
Infection. It's not saline; there's more than just saltwater in the sea and all those microbes are gonna wreck havok on your body having bypassed most of the things that normally keep them out of your body.
No. The first part is completely wrong.
Embolism describes a blockade of a vessel from blood flow. That's not what will happen with seawater nor normal water.
Seawater is hyperosmolar and therefore would draw water into the vessels from the intracellular region and cause hypertonia (high blood pressure), but it takes a fuckton of it to make the blood so hyperosmolar that the erythrocytes are disfigured. (To give you a comparison: Sea water has around 3% saline content. We used to give hyperosmolar solutions that had 7.2% and starch in it - so with a much stronger effect). In the end the kidneys would very likely fail and kill the person in combination with the hypertension.
Normal water has the opposite effect - it's hypoosmolar and therefore goes the other way. (And causes edema but not embolism)
Air is a totally different story and air embolisms are a real threat - but even air needs much more than one would think. (A few ml won't hurt an average.)
Infection? Fuck yes.
Not sure if this is your subject matter expertise or not but what if you sterilized the seawater, so we don’t need to worry about infection, purged the air from the line, so no embolism, and only injected 300mL which is a comparable amount to saline you might receive in a hospital.
Seawater is 3.5% salt vs saline which is 0.9% would that much salt just be diluted by the body or could it cause local damage?
I just watch a lot of chubbyemu vids and may be a slight bit of a hypochondriac.
I can't imagine the salt being good for you. It could kill internal flora, it might cause pain, and it definitely is going to not be fun for your kidneys.
Bottom line: You should not inject anything into yourself, except as prescribed by a doctor. I wouldn't even inject recreational drugs, personally. And I have no qualms about doing drugs.
Well, it's at about 3.5% salt, while saline solution for the body is at about 0.9%. Basically, it would burn everything it directly came into contact with. Depending on how much you shot up, maybe your kidneys would stop anything systemic from happening, but that's getting into medical territory I'm cloudier on. They used to further punish people after a whipping by cleaning up with seawater. It sounds like that was actually the more painful part of the event, when it was done.
I read a paper recently that suggested that it's because vertebrates originally evolved in brackish river estuaries. That makes me curious how salty bugs are. Snails, at least, can definitely adapt to living in very concentrated brine, given a bit of time to evolve for it.
IIRC you can safely drink water that's a bit more salty than you, given that you're in good health. Seawater is too much for humans, though; it famously will only make you more thirsty. Sea birds have a special gland in their face that amounts to an extra kidney specifically for removing salt. Whales just get enough water from the fish they eat. I'm not sure about fish themselves now.
Thank you for the detailed answer!!
No problem!
The whole reason you have skin is to protect you from nature.
Your body is a tube; anything you swallow is subjected to all sorts of processes designed to break that thing down into tiny pieces that get checked over and over by the guardians in your body.
Anytime the doctor injects you they sterilize your skin and make sure that the vial the product comes has been sterilized.
tl, dr - it's a really dumb idea
But come on, it wouldn’t be that dangerous, right?
🤦♀️ this is some serious /r/WhyWomenLiveLonger/ content
I mean so far the answer seems to be “as long as you dilute it a bit first you’d be fine”
that does not seem to be a reasonable takeaway, bacterial and fungal infections from injecting non-sterile solutions into your body can definitely kill you
hyperfocusing on how dilute the salt would need to be for it not to be dangerous misses a lot of context
https://lemmy.world/comment/19428466
Most of this is fairly handwavey without numbers to be fair. But like, this is the reason we have an immune system, right?
does the immune system nullify risk of contracting an illness in other contexts? Certainly not perfectly - and injecting dirty sea water directly puts the bacteria, fungi, and parasites into your bloodstream, bypassing the protective measures your body normally has for keeping that stuff on the outside (like mucus, hair, the acidic environment of the stomach, etc.).
Yeah, you might be able to make ghetto saline with distilled water and the ocean and not become emergently ill, but you shouldn't actually do it. Even if you collect from an immaculate site and dodge any human (or mammal? This is the kind of weird situation where zoonosis could happen) pathogens, foreign bodies in the bloodstream won't make you healthier.
I haven't seen much evidence OP thinks this is a good idea and not just a thought experiment, though. That would be weird.
I wouldn't want to do that without some significant heat and pressure for an extended period of time, and maybe without some preservatives added for good measure, and honestly I wouldn't be past using a syringe filter to further purify it - anything that gets injected into my body better be safe, those are crazy risks
view more: next ›